Iris Malikhân

The opening from the sprayer releases something akin to a decrepit lightning bolt locked in a dusty crypt. Sharp, electric decay, musty current, moth-eaten voltage. Then…a bit of shadowy aromatic lycanthropy, and it’s again what I thought I loved. A phantasmagoric zoetrope, a being resembling a Maria Germanova-type, shapeshifting through theatrical roles, a noble lady draped in jewels, a swaggering pirate, a beggar woman cloaked in rags, an avant-garde fairy in Stanislavski’s embodiment of The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck. Ghostly photographs, the specters haunting antique cartes de visite. At turns, powdery, leathery, metallic, vegetal, austere, sophisticated. Moscow Art Theatre witch-queen caught mid-transformation, glamorous and gloomy, enigmatic and a bit unsettling.