Aino Peryshkina
Adorable Threat

The installation is a soft, hybrid sculpture that moves fluidly. It is alluring and yet slightly unsettling. While you can recognize that it has features of a “cute” creature, they are distorted, and appear excessively physical and strange. The sculpture draws you in, inviting you to approach it, touch it, and look more closely, and at this moment your sense of comfort begins to mingle with unease.

The work explores why people are instinctively drawn to small, soft, and “cute” forms and how this feeling of empathy can give way to disgust or fear. The objective form imbues what is typically associated with care and tenderness with anxiety, vulnerability, and physicality. The creature stands at the cusp between the attractive and the repulsive, forcing viewers to look more closely at their own reactions and examine the limits of their empathy.

The central idea of the project is to present an image of a creature that reflects the moment when our fears and fragility are laid bare, but when we still seek points of support, something that we can use to pull through and find comfort. These point will be different for every viewer, and as you become more closely acquainted with the creature, your attention gradually shifts away from its “strangeness” towards a shared vulnerability. The installation invites us to view the contemporary condition not only as a source of anxiety, but also as a space of empathy directed both inward and outward.