The work offers a meditation on escape, directing the viewer to a moment of transition — a step after which a tangible trace remains.

“Based on my own inner observations, people’s faces seem to change so much over time. It feels as though it has become impossible to find anyone with an expression that means nothing at all. In my mind, grimaces or caricatures emerge, evoking a sense of distrust and perhaps sadness, a certain feeling of hopelessness.

The face is like a condensation of the whole person in one place, like a banner, like a mask. Nowadays, one expects to see not people, but grotesque figures, as if from fairy tales or stories of black and white, good and evil. They evoke a sense of danger and threat because of their resemblance to the stone gargoyles of medieval cathedrals.

What distinguishes masks from real faces? What does it mean to have a ‘real face’? Perhaps some masks can no longer be removed, and some makeup can never be wiped away.”

— Pyotr Dyakov