- Main
- Artists' works
- Manefique A
AntiGonna
“Mannequin “A” is a surrealistic film about former residents of a women’s dormitory who now peacefully live their ordinary lives as female ghosts in the small town of Bucha (Kyiv region). Each of them had her own fate with personal problems, relationships, hopes, and plans for the future. In 2022, due to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, almost all of them perished when a Russian missile hit their house. However, despite their lives being abruptly and cruelly interrupted, they still reside there, not as living beings, but as ghosts. Each ghost tries to astral project to warn their former living human body about the horrific danger threatening them.
The atmosphere of the house where AntiGonna filmed these scenes in 2023 is more reminiscent of renovation works than of a bombed-out ghost house, to which no one is interested anymore, just like the simple life stories of ordinary women depicted in the film.
Under the artistic name AntiGonna and production AntiGonStaff is Oksana Andreieva (b.1986, Vinnytsia, Ukraine). She is an independent filmmaker, artist, actress and producer. Her practice spans experimental documentary, video art, VR 360, theatrical performance, photography, and installation, exploring the themes of fear, violence, death, and magical rituals through new perspectives on sexuality. Based previously in Kyiv and Warsaw, since 2022 she has lived and worked in Paris.
In AntiGonna’s art, porn horrors form a genre that combines elements of porn and horror in such a way that they neutralize each other’s consumer appeal. The aesthetics and narrative resemble rituals meant to tame the terror of existence by giving it a prop-like form. These rituals attempt to domesticate the horror of life, while also exposing hidden mechanisms of survival. Her practice also investigates the processing of personal identity, the comprehension of various aspects of sexuality and gender identity — hence, AntiGonStaff’s artistic activity is inseparable from working with trauma.
AntiGonna’s projects generally verge on experimental cinematography, performance and theatrical production, and sometimes employ media installations and photography. The main themes in her practice include fear, sex, and death in the public imagination. Her work is autobiographical, yet her imagery remains strictly metaphorical and used as a tool of expression. In her view, prohibitions and taboos keep public consciousness under pressure, but what they require is not concealment or condemnation, but the opposite — open discussion, allowing each individual to confront their own “self.”
