Context

The invasion began in February 2022. At the time, I was studying in London and trying to understand what kind of response was possible from the position I actually occupied: Russian-born, far from the battlefield, implicated by origin, horrified by the violence, and unable to treat the event as distant news.

The first months of the war carried a specific atmosphere of disbelief. Many people had understood that Russia was dangerous; fewer had really believed that the full-scale invasion would happen in this form. The work came from that moment of shock, shame, anger, and urgency.

I treated the performance as an immediate artistic response. The task was to give the political body a visible form: ugly, mobile, overgrown with faces, difficult to carry, and impossible to make dignified.

A body for the country

The costume was built as a kind of war worm: a large, awkward body made from camouflage fabric, hula hoops, painted masks, and red plastic forms that suggested congealed blood or torn matter.

The seven faces were painted on masks by Philip Firsov. They represented an abstract collective body shaped by support, denial, obedience, propaganda, fear, and political blindness. Their eyes are open, but the creature does not see.

The structure was physically difficult to carry. The upper part had to be held up from inside with extended arms, otherwise the worm collapsed. This mattered to the work. The body appeared monstrous, unstable, exhausting, and badly assembled.

The walk

The performance was filmed by Oliver Nelken. We walked through central London with the creature moving slowly through ordinary public space. It did not attack anyone or directly confront passers-by. It simply appeared, moved, turned its head, and continued.

That lack of direct interaction was part of the work. The monster was inserted into the city as an unwanted political body: visible, absurd, shameful, and present among cafés, shopfronts, pavements, crossings, and tourists.

The route moved from the area around the BBC towards Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. The work placed the creature inside a city of institutions, media, monuments, and spectators, without asking the city to resolve it.

Looking back

Looking back, I see War Worm as a student work, but also as a precise early reaction. It was made quickly, in a moment when the situation demanded some kind of form before there was enough distance to understand it.

The strength of the piece is in the body of the costume: the grotesque bulk, the badly coordinated movement, the painted faces, the red fragments, the comic boots, the effort of keeping the whole creature upright.

It was a way of saying that Russia, at that moment, could not be represented by a flag, a map, or a slogan. It had to be carried as a monster: theatrical, damaged, ridiculous, frightening, and made from the materials available at the time.