Fear appears as a light prick deep in the mind, yet it quickly rises to the surface and turns into a powerful impulse. It grows stronger and repeatedly threatens to tear apart an already battered reality, one marked by global fractures, shifts and dislocations, anonymous systems of control, and old but resilient stereotypes. Fear can paralyze. It can push you outside your own body and turn you into an observer of yourself, driven by primal, instinctive impulses: to run, to play dead, or to strike first. Anything, as long as no one sees that we are truly afraid.

Still, it is possible to stop. By surrounding oneself with many witnesses, like mirrors, one can begin an investigation: to fix fear in its many forms and manifestations, and to restrain its primitive, destructive nature.

Such an attempt to chart the space of fear has been created by two artists, Zoja Golubeva and Deniss Evins. Their artistic languages and means of expression differ. They range from digital technologies and electronic waste to mirror illusions of obsolete mechanisms, and to Deniss’s solitary kombucha cultures that search for a way to speak about loneliness. Zoja’s canvases, which refer the viewer to the classical tradition of European Baroque painting, tell stories of despair, solitude, and the horror of the inner darkness of the human self.

During the process of creating the exhibition, another participant emerged: Nature. Her presence was unexpected even for the artists themselves. Throughout the history of art, Nature has usually been approached as something distant and unattainable, ideal in its indifference. Here, however, she appeared without explanation and became a co-author. Compositions arising from the organic structures of forest mushrooms revealed numerous striking images on the artist’s canvases, almost portraits, which Zoja later deciphered by recognizing familiar and long-forgotten fragments of her own past.

The works of both artists remain open to the stories of the viewers. The exhibition invites visitors to encounter their own fears and to listen to those of others, their bitterness and vulnerability, and to imagine what it feels like when anxiety recedes. What becomes visible in a space that has been released from fear? Are we still ourselves after parting with our private horrors? Are we still ourselves after forgetting how the first signal of approaching panic sounds in the mind?

At this point, following the logic of contemporary art, whose strength and weakness both reside in the exhibition space, the curator appears. He enters, looks around, spreads his hands, and leaves in silence. There are no elaborate phrases, no textual arrogance, no worn quotations from once-fashionable but now unread postmodern illusionists. In truth, he is afraid as well. He simply acknowledges that the only remedy for panic is neither text nor conversation, but the meeting of two people: the viewer and the artist. Instead of offering unnecessary explanatory notes, he offers himself to the artists, together with his fears, so that one day he might begin to write again.

We agreed that this exhibition is about a meeting.
Palms turned upward.
Eyes closed tight, in fear and in pleasure.

And remember: this is your exhibition too. By default, you are co-authors of our time, a time that seems endlessly talkative, yet remains almost soundless.