Life's a Fairytale — Art and AR for the Tretyakov Gallery

Life's a Fairytale is a curatorial project for the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was conceived as an expansion of the mammoth "Russian Fairytale" exhibition into augmented reality, but soon became something more.

Try all the Instamasks on at Tretyakov Gallery's official Instagram. By the way, if you wear any of them, do you become a part of the artwork or do you appropriate it as a part of your identity?

The concept was to look at folklore's mystical reality through the lens of artists whose chosen media range from as classical as painting to as cutting-edge as AR and prosthetics. Our aim was to reveal mythological, fairy-tale characters and concepts inside contemporaneity via the artists' work.

Animated Koschei mask with a crown and a half-skull covering one side of the face

Painter Vitaly Prostov's work is about time. Koschei is the ruler of the land of the dead, and while half of his skull is dead, another half is flowing like a metaphorical Styx as a reminder of shortness of time we all have.

Make-up artist and LGBTQ+ activist Masha Vorslav's Marfusha is about identity. An interactive mask that allows you to choose the amount of drag/camp make-up you put on yourself in order to question: which identity is your true one?

Marfusha augmented-reality portrait with a colourful crown and bright face make-up

Leshy portrait with white calligraphic lettering wrapped around the neck

Illarion Gordon's calligraphy is about rebellion. His character is Leshy, the forest spirit whose real name used to be taboo. So Illarion wrote all his substitute names together with the real one to make Leshy come alive. Wear it with defiance.

Cyber/prosthetic artist Nikita Replyanski reminds us about the power and perils of technology. His Bogatyr, a folklore hero-knight, is now equipped with code and exploits - arguably, the most powerful weapons of our time.

Animated Bogatyr portrait with a metallic helmet and purple visor

Vasilisa portrait with a yellow illustrated sleep mask and decorative costume

Fashion illustrator Alena Lavdovskaya poses contemporary questions about personal beauty. Her Vasilisa, a magic bride from fairytales, replaces a traditional decorative headpiece with a sleep mask. So, does our perception of own beauty correlate with enough time for sleep, the very time we are devoid of in late capitalism?

Children's books illustrator Victoria Semykina's Baba Yaga is about illusion if not hallucination. Her character is a gatekeeper to the magic world, which comes alive not least because of magic mushrooms depicted on her head-cloth.

Baba Yaga portrait with a blue illustrated head-cloth and an eye patch

Credits
Tretyakov Gallery
Exhibition head curator and Chief Russian Beauty: Tatiana Getman
Curator and contemporary art liaison: Ivan Antonov
Folklore guru: Nikita Petrov

Avocado Toast
Curator: Victor Lander
Co-curator and producer: Olya Nikolaeva
Partner in crime: Denis Astakhov
Instamasks production: Instafilter

Life's a Fairytale — Art and AR for the Tretyakov Gallery

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