«The masks» installation is dedicated to one of the most frightening pages of our country’s history of the XX century - the Gulag system. The installation appeals not to the common Gulag understanding, but to a personal perception of the audience, among which the majority are relatives and descendants of people involved in that system.

Five objects that are different in height and materials (wood, metal, stone, cement) by their form remind of a watchtower of North Caucasus. The upper part contains the author’s reconstruction of face masks, which Gulag’s prisoners used to attempt to protect themselves from the cold.

This artwork combines massive, heavy, cold materials with colorful, pastel, and soft fabrics. Videos of the white impenetrable sky and a snow-covered path, which we follow, are translated in the frozen «body» of these masks - keepers and guardians of the memory. We look at the world or deep inside memories through the eyes of the mask, we try it on.

The metallic net placed close to «masks» is filled with memory knots of the audience to show not only the scale of the historical event, the reflection of our generation, the unwillingness to forget the past but also to remind that it happened  not so long ago.