Home Sweet Hospital

In the TB hospital where I spent 7 months all patients are forced to stay for at least 6 months. Some of them even live there for many years. It feels more like dirty dormitory run by nurses. Patients like to decorate their corners. I remember putting some posters on the walls and a carpet near my bed on the floor. This kind of experience traumatizes you, but it also gives you a new vision of life. You realize that even a hospital can become your home, and you may even enjoy it. It gives you a combination of feelings that are not supposed to come together. Being close to death and laughing with your ward mates, always on the edge of conflicting feelings. Even though you are scared, you adapt. Trying to make something good out of strange circumstances.

"Home Sweet Hospital" is a multimedia project where I compare the hospital to a normal apartment, where I turn a ward into a bedroom, a procedure cabinet into a kitchen, or a lobby into the living room. My hospital is not scary, it becomes a warm cozy place, no different from our homes, but still, a drop counter or a white metal bed can remind you of the presence of imminent death. It is a small society, no different from the others, but totally closed off from the outside world.

***

"Highly contagious" is a performance which took place on 28th of September 2019 during opening of my solo exhibition "Chamber # 12" in the art space Cube.Moscow (few months before the beginning of the pandemic Covid19).

I placed a sign near my installation at Cube.Moscow, reminding visitors of the rule to wear a mask when leaving the hospital chamber. Soon the entire exhibition space was occupied by people wearing masks. My chamber represents a "free of stigma" environment, where open discussions thrive among chamber-mates. However, stepping outside this protected space carries the risk of judgment and non-acceptance, prompting the need to conceal one's face behind a mask.