Let it Breathe

Svetlana Ochkovskaya

Svetlana makes immersive, disorientating, alien spray-foam installations and costumes; mythic representations of her world view. Inhabited by a creature that is neither human nor alien, real or imaginary, these glowing environments and tactile costumes bend the fragile boundaries of our perceived reality.

For this Hidden Wardrobe show, Svetlana will be exhibiting a new sculptural work, called Let it Breathe.

“Our lungs are two organs inside our chest filling with air as we breathe in. However, the most important function of the lungs is to carry movements of mind, speech, and body.

Referring to personal experience of lung surgeries during the lockdowns – when the illness had painstakingly shifted my life – this display meditates on a chance as a conductor that orchestrates our encounter of the world. “Where the lung is like a horse, and the mind is the rider if there is something wrong with the horse the rider will not be able to ride properly” (Have Carel, 2016). Through this work, I explore the phenomenology of spatial perception.

Imagining the Hidden Wardrobe building as a creature with its unique system of organs, I hope to break down the everyday experience of space and create a disorientated environment, moving away from our atomised perception of the world.”