Lördag och söndag 22 – 23 februari: Workshop om territorier och hemvist med konstnären Kirill Agafonov

The artist Kirill Agafonov introduces the project “Embassy of Microterritories,” which he has been developing together with Natalia Peredvigina during the two years that have passed since they fled Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The project circles around a briefcase “diplomat’ or “attachéväska”, more commonly known as an “attaché́’s briefcase”. They fill it with a variety of stories and artifacts while traveling from the city Izhevsk in central Russia to Uzbekistan, and then further on to Sweden and Switzerland. With the help of the objects, the briefcase becomes a portable mini embassy with which Kirill and Natalia can initiate conversations about the personal cultural ground, territories and an ability to reside.

Participants of the workshop together with Kirill Agafonov will wander on the microterritories of their memory, imagination and present experience. They will transform a story to a schematic map and stitch a symbol from it on a scrap of fabric. Kirill encourages to do it directly on own clothes as we can see it in indigenous cultures. It could be a guest of personification, a sign which will support you and probably send a message to others, or even an ornament which protects. No particular skills required!

Kirill Agafonov is part of the exhibition The Observatory: Art and Life in the Critical zone