Witch’s Chair
Witch’s Chair is a conceptual investigation of an object’s movement through time and space, begun in January 2022. This long-term experiment explores the relationship between an object (a chair), its environment and the creation of myth. Small changes were recorded daily—from the chair’s movements to the appearance of new elements such as litter and inscriptions—creating a dynamic narrative.
Central idea
The chair functions not merely as a piece of furniture but as a symbol of a mythological space where reality and human perception interact. Just as a witch in mythology uses knowledge to command the forces of nature, the object in Witch’s Chair seems to possess a will of its own, at once stationary and mobile.
An important principle of the project is that the object cannot be influenced directly. The artist records the changes affecting the chair without intervening, merely adding information or inscriptions. The object’s drift thus resembles a movement through time and space in which forces from the outside world create a new order and a new myth.
Visualising the process
The project can be compared to ancient rituals that endowed objects with sacred meaning. A chair in a courtyard or on a street becomes a kind of artefact linking history, mythology and contemporary urban life. Each day, even small changes during a thaw or the arrival of a crow become significant, a metaphor for the interaction between people and time.
Witch’s Chair therefore investigates not only the chair’s physical movement but also our perception of time, memory and our relationship with the world around us.
In this project, the chair becomes a symbol of transformation and rebirth. From an everyday object to a sacred artefact, it passes through many stages: stillness, movement, interaction with its surroundings and, finally, disappearance. Metaphorically, this process recalls the mythological hero’s journey: losing an original purpose, passing through trials and eventually acquiring new meaning. The chair in Witch’s Chair becomes a mediator between the everyday and the sacred. Its presence on the street, in the urban environment, symbolises both solitude and belonging to a shared space. Like any forgotten object, the chair stands on the edge of oblivion, yet through the observation and recording of its changing states, it enters the realm of mythology. Its transformation into a sacred object reflects the project’s central idea: through the lens of art, anything can be filled with new meaning and significance. The project shows that even the most ordinary things, discarded by the roadside of life, can be reborn as part of a new, mystical context. Just as alchemy transformed base substances into gold, here the chair acquires sacred value through a cycle of changes, becoming a symbol of transition and eternal return to a new context of meaning.
Thanks to Anna Bobrovskaya @bobro_lab for the mask and Alena Lipkovskaya @lpkvskaya for the character.
