Marius Jonutis
This object interprets the plot of the oriental fairy tale One Thousand and One Nights as a tense story about survival, power and imagination. Scheherazade here becomes the creator's archetype and the stories she follows are not just entertainment. Each unfinished fairy tale becomes another night experienced, a death postponed, another opportunity to speak.
The space of the object resembles a stage or a closed memory box. The fairy tale titles written on improvised pillows act as a fragmentary archive of stories. As signs of cultural memory preserving life through words. And the heads of previous concubines laid out in the bottom drawer introduce a creepy, grotesque subtext. The decorative, almost toy-like aesthetic contrasts with hidden violence and existential tension.
M. Jonutis subtly combines the stylistics of the folk primitive, irony and surrealist narrative. The work speaks of the fragility of women in a patriarchal system of power, but also of the ability of creativity, language, and imagination to resist destruction.
The fairy tale here becomes not a fantasy, but a form of survival.
