Two-Headed Tales

“Two-Headed Tales” is a narrative-based art installation loosely based on real and imagined memories of growing up in Leningrad, USSR, during the fall of the Soviet Union. The story is told from the perspective of a little girl and her ambiguously imaginary friend. After an argument, the girl’s younger brother disappears into the subway underground. In order to find him, she and her doppelganger embark on a quest where they encounter such surreal characters as a bureaucrat with the power to slow down time, a snoop who trades sweets for stories of misfortune, a double-headed meteorologist who predicts the weather by reading tea leaves, and a corrupt apparatchik who works as a collector of broken hearts. The protagonist must navigate this threatening world where nothing is as it seems, and every character has a self-serving agenda, in order to find her brother before he disappears forever.

Blurring the boundary between real and the fantastic, symbolic and allegorical characters populate this narrative, revealing historically commonplace situations perceived through the imagination of a child. Philosophical insights revealed through childhood innocence create an under-layer and subtle complexity.   The childhood vision and imagination create a way of peering behind the curtain of complex social situations, revealing the true essence of what is often nonsensical activity that adults engage in without conscious thought.   In this way, an avenue for reexamination of human behavior is opened.