This year, as the ‘Message to Man‘ film festival celebrates its anniversary, there has been another reinterpretation of its main symbol — the Centaur. An image born from a drawing by Nadiya Rusheva. An image that was transformed into the festival's main prize in 1989 by artist Dmitry Pakhomov.
To create a new version of the film festival poster, the Message to Man team approached four artists from St. Petersburg — Sasha Kokacheva, Marya Dmitrieva, Leonid Tskhe and Ilya Ovsyannikov — with a request to present their vision of the Centaur.
Sasha Kokacheva was chosen as the winner. Here is what the artist herself says about the image she created: "The main character is the Centaur, a symbol of borderline and duality: he seems to emerge from the landscape ghostly, silhouetted, remaining part of the environment and at the same time going beyond its limits. For me, it is an image of a person searching in the city, an attempt to connect the inner and outer worlds, reality and myth. It is an image of liminality — childishness and strength, myth and reality, memory and the present. St. Petersburg is revealed here not through architectural details, but through a colourful environment where darkness and light, humidity and transparency create an emotional portrait of space. By embedding Kentavrenko in the landscape, I am talking about a person who always exists on the border between the real and the mythological, the personal and the
collective."
