The installation Dollhouse is a depiction of the artist’s and her cellmates’ personal experience in Belarussian pre-trial detention centers (related to participation in the protest movement in 2020). It was not only an experience of fear and frustration but also solidarity, caring, “quiet” tactics of resistance. Caring for each other, empathy, building fragile infrastructures of everyday life, interpersonal relationships, support systems and sisterhood - these are lines of solidarity networks where weakness opposes strength and imagination becomes a political tool.

The installation centers around a table — the foundation of the prisoners’ daily life — and blankets, which embody warmth and care, and were in short supply in the overcrowded cell. Nadya and her cellmates made drawings and portraits, kept a pseudo-diary of the Little Mermaid, played games, wrapped each other in blankets, sang, washed each other’s hair, shared their intimate dreams.

The transformation of the cell into a “dollhouse” represents the reappropriation of a cold, inhuman space of violence and aggression. A dollhouse is a deceptive girlish world, a world of sweet dreams, sensuality, infantilism, security. But placed in the context of the prison system it becomes a symbol of the strength of weakness, lines of resistance, caring and support. This is how Nadya describes her experience:

“We washed each other's hair and braided them.

We shared our personal stories and played fortune-telling.

We gave each other massages, impromptu beauty treatments and drew ballpoint pen tattoos.

We played simple games and made our own games out of paper.

We drew, sculpted and painted.

We kept diaries and sang songs.

We argued or socialized with the guards, as if they were next door boys or camp counselors at a children's camp.

We played in a children camp within a correctional facility.

We served a sentence in a prison cell for ten people and turned it into a dollhouse”.

Text: Antonina Stebur.