A fearless figure, her legs buried in the snow.

Her face is pale, unevenly powdered white, as if applied clumsily by a child. She is barefoot. On her head is a tall white wig, an echo of decadent past ostentation, tangled and snarled like a leftover prop from a costume collection, baring the dark, rebellious, and vibrant strands of hair on her nape, obstinate against the bleached pallor. Her lips are painted bright red, and the same hue surrounds her wide-open eyes. Her evening gown is a vivid red, unsuitable for her dimensions or the cold weather. Even her bare hands and feet are covered thickly in red: one hand clutches a handkerchief almost flapping away in the freezing wind, another grasps a huge glass spoon. 

She is Little Red Riding Hood. A disheveled party girl. She is immersed among forest trees in her glittering dress as we watch her from behind, from a wolf’s position. 

The classic fairytale story, steadily skipping throughout the centuries over territorial, linguistic, and national borders, seemingly as ancient as language itself. At the heart of the story there is almost always, whether implicitly or explicitly, a common person, someone whose normal life has been touched by some magic or destiny. Swept up in their story, we too are asked to believe that some wonder will rescue us from the arbitrary nature of our lives, liberating us from its inevitable end.

The solo exhibition “I set Frank Barcelona on fire” of Alina Orlov adheres to the familiar pattern of the folk story, transforming the entire gallery into a fanciful space of glass objects. We, visitors to the exhibition, can track the roots of the story and the path of our heroine.

We enter the gallery through an ironwork gate with a chicken foot at its center, one of the hallmarks of the famous Slavic witch Baba Yaga, whose house stands on chicken legs. Accepting the invitation, we open the black iron gate and momentarily become the child lost in the woods. “Once upon a time” is here, happening right now.

The first object Orlov evokes is a glistening bristled broom made of glass standing upright. This domestic device will no longer ply its traditional trade; this is why it testifies so clearly to the liberties witches take. The broom will not be used to clean the house, but to soar to the skies. It marks the fact that we are now in the domain of a spell whisperer, a conjurer of magic, an augur, and a beguiler. At her will, the ancestral mothers can be roused, clouds may condense to topple the heavens, the ground beneath us may tremble and split.

Like the broom, the other items in the enchanted house may serve as markers on the path leading to the video and the girl it features, including several items we may already have passed. They are the key to understanding the story of this drifter so drenched in red.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m652OgodFRE&t=6s

Once upon a time

A second figure appears after her: a young man. Dressed in preposterous pageantry, detached from his surroundings. He wears a top hat, looking like a circus manager’s apprentice who has lost his troupe. He hugs a glass teddy bear, clenching it to his chest as if it were a soft furry doll. He paces the icy grounds without direction or affect. The tracks that he and she meander through will lead them towards evening to a cabin, a place of warmth, refuge, and encounter.

The spirit of fairytale is everywhere in the work, persisting even after Orlov scratches and bends it again and again, allowing the elements of “our world” to percolate into its depths. The path taken by the heroine (perhaps the most fundamental of story elements), which is the path she deviates from, is a cracked asphalt road. Occasionally a car passes through, a hello signal from our tediously familiar world, suddenly and confusingly breaching the set of a snowy and magical wonderland. 

What set up this fairytale? What incited its inception? Orlov deliberately avoids answering. We do not know what motivated the wanderer (played by Orlov herself) to embark on her journey. We also do not see her first encounter with the young man. Almost to its finale, Orlov’s story is comprised of intermediary situations: walking or waiting. The couple is created before us from nothing, without dialogue. He and she simply exist alongside the other, their couplehood established as fact just as their scruffy grand apparel. She plays the piano; he watches her as his hands move up and down to fill the bellows of a concertina. He prepares meat broth for her, and she sits at the table, before her a glass goblet of red wine, its stem in the shape of a chicken’s leg. We have seen such goblets in the gallery space. The enormous glass spoon rests on the table. The young man lays both hands on her shoulders in a moment that seems comforting, a tender touch. But he is just prodding her to sit erect. To behave.

The bristle broom, the wine goblets, the embellished spoon, all are steeped in allure like the fragments of childhood frozen and buried deep in the subconscious. Transparent husks of memory, resonances melted and shaped into crystal molds. They are fragile and glorious, encapsulating a beautiful and clear past that is destined to shatter. Indeed, it is the decorated spoon, the item that has been with the heroine from the beginning, which will form the gateway for violence to explode in the story.

The wanderer is still at the dining table. Her face is seen in close-up. She looks ahead but does not see us. She sees nothing. Her gaze is hooded. The man feeds her with her own glass spoon. For long minutes he takes care to ladle more and more food on the huge spoon from the meat broth, cramming it into her mouth as she struggles to consume such vast quantities of food. She does not stop or resist, even when the spoon is replaced with a wine goblet. Remnants of food and wine are shoveled into her mouth and dribble down her chin. She obediently acquiesces. Succumbing to this power relation with painful submissiveness. The spoon does not symbolize nutrition or security. It holds no childhood secret. The precious item the wanderer has carried during her travels in the snow is now a means of subjugation. Beyond, a storm is raging. 

Once upon a time…..later

The third act opens with the man’s departure. He leaves alone, returning to the asphalt road and the path fated for story heroes, striding towards the horizon in a top hat, one hand holding the concertina and the other the glass teddy bear. Maybe he will find another Little Red Riding Hood.

Is this the end? If so, we began with a heroine and ended with a hero. The fate of Little Red Riding Hood (or Cinderella) is not that of Jack and his magic bean stalks. For little boys, such fairy tales recount the image of heroes, princesses, and an awaiting crown. For little girls, they end in devourment. For girls, these stories are a warning, a message to stay on the path, to be gracious and well mannered, and to never talk to strangers or be gobbled by wolves. A girl who strays and gives in to her desires will fall prey to the desires of others. 

But the story before us is not over. Far from it, the fairy tale is not that of Little Red Riding Hood. Instead, it is a patchwork: strips of various stories sewn together with a coarse needle held in the hands of a woman. Now winter has ended. The snow has melted, exposing the trees, and seeping into the earth. This is a new season, one of change and therefore the season of the witch, the cabin’s owner and the guardian standing on the threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Again, we detour from the path, a route that sometimes seems to exist only to mark what was left behind. Again. Two young figures in evening gowns attired in wigs and busy with the task of using bristles and twigs to light a campfire. One picks up the top hat lying on the ground, crushing it, and throwing it into the flames. Someone is about to be burnt at the stake. From the woods, the wanderer emerges. It’s as if she has been divided into three entities, such as in the way of Baba Yaga, and the three witches of Macbeth, and the Moirai, the incarnations of destiny in Greek mythology that weave the threads on men’s lives on their loom and finally cut the strings.

The fire grows hot. Evening descends into night. The three witches burn the man’s clothes and then his concertina. The flames consume it all. Any stray tatter of fabric that flutters away is returned to the fire with a glass spoon. The tool taken from the wanderer, the one used by the young man to cram and bloat her until she could take no more. With the dawn, it is hers again. 

Plains

Every fairy tale occurs in two domains. It begins in the world of reality. Then some calamity erupts from a ban that has been broken or an unbearable event, something that flings the hero or heroine into another domain, into an enchanted forest. The forest is full of predators, perils, and sorcery but it is also the only place in which quick thinking and kindheartedness can overcome dire circumstances, even if at times aided by magic beans, a bold huntsman, or a helpful fairy godmother. Only in fairy tales can that which was taken be retrieved, and only here can the fragments be put back together. In reality, even when gluing pieces together is possible, the old cracks are forever visible.

Orlov has created a wonderland. She has taken back the power to shape and mold the story anew, making changes. She reclaims the ability to recount a fantastical tale that deviates from the rigid and oppressive rules of folk stories. She gathers the tatters of stories to weave a quilt to cover all. The harsh moralistic admonishments have been set aflame.

In the fire’s heat, she is the storyteller.

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