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Eugene STRELKOV
in cooperation with Dmitriy KHAZAN

WATERBUST

«bells» and «maidens going out» (folk song) performed by «vezhlivy otkaz»


The participants of our interactive beauty contest are carved figures of mermaids that protect countryside houses in the north of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. A hundred years ago austere people, descendants of Old Ritualists, lived here: men with spade beards and women with tightly bound headclothes and buttoned-up collars. One would think: what could be erotic about that? But it broke through to window ledges and was so powerful and tender, that it seems that the bosoms of these pretties were not carved with a cold axe, but shaped with warm hands.

When translating the mermaids from wooden boards on to a computer monitor, we only slightly touched their bodies with virtual makeup: but this is only natural for a beauty contest.

Guardian mermaid
End of 19th century, Nizhny Novgord Oblast over the Volga, wood, axe work, carving Appearance of rich carvings on the walls of Volga houses built in the second half of the 19th century was the result of coming of steamboats. Numerous articles that had built sailing and rowing boats lost their habitual job and transferred fancy decorations of traditional Volga boats (rasshivas) on the living houses. That was when first guardian mermaids and mermen were carved, which were to protect the owners of the houses «with all their household» from various adversities, as earlier «faraonkas» and «Sirin birds» protected boats and decorated them.