Dream Art Exhibition at Folkestone’s Eight Squared Gallery
There are diverse approaches to curating exhibitions. A curator, much like a storyteller, can narrate stories in various ways: by crafting a linear narrative that guides the viewer or by creating an atmospheric space, a suspended world, where the space itself shapes how we feel and think. This second approach recalls historical figures like Pontus Hultén and Harald Szeemann, whose exhibitions defied rigid explanations, instead allowing for layered, open-ended experiences that challenged the senses and mind alike. And, of course, one can’t overlook the Surrealist exhibitions curated by Marcel Duchamp (a fitting association given the references in the curatorial text itself to continuing the Surrealist tradition of exploring the subconscious states). In this way, a curator can be seen as a co-creator of dreams and perceptions, weaving together artworks, textures, and soundscapes to build an immersive environment.
Сurator of the exhibition, Narmina Askerova, embraces this latter path. Through Dream Art, she invites viewers to wander into a space as fluid and surreal as the landscapes of their own dreams. It’s an experience where the line between reality and imagination blurs, a quiet resistance to the demands of logic and linearity. Moving through Eight Squared Gallery, you become a participant in a loosely woven fantasy — a world where light, sound, and words melt together, drawing you in.
The exhibition is meticulously disordered: sandy tones underfoot, loops of sound weaving around visual fragments (that reveal themselves as texts by Elena Timokhina), and fleeting hints of narratives that almost form, then dissolve back into ambiguity. There is no linear story unfolding here; rather, the exhibition evokes a fluid, ethereal atmosphere that encourages the viewer to drift between the waking world and the dream world. Artists such as Diana Kozlova, Anastasia Rak, and Alina Saffron and others create works that invite such a liminal experience — exploring the subconscious, the strange, and the surreal. Their pieces, each in its own way, challenge the viewer to step away from conventional perception and to engage with the deeper, often unexplored realms of the mind.
In Diana Kozlova’s series Whispers in the Fog, Figures in the Mist, Silent Guardians of the Mist, the trees are not merely photographed — they are suspended between worlds. The fog moves through the images like an enigma, masking and revealing in quiet succession, as if the landscape itself is holding its breath. There is an unsettling beauty in the way these figures emerge — vague, distant, and yet undeniable.
In the context of Dream Art, Kozlova’s work resonates with the exhibition’s exploration of the subconscious. The trees, standing like silent sentinels, seem to guard a secret that is both familiar and out of reach. The fog doesn’t simply obscure; it transforms, shifting the viewer’s understanding of the natural world into something more dreamlike, more elusive. Each photograph becomes a meditation on presence and absence, where clarity is always just beyond our grasp, and the boundary between what we see and what we feel is constantly in flux. Kozlova’s artworks evoke a sense of magical realism, where the mundane is transformed into the extraordinary. The fog, as both a literal and metaphorical veil, imbues the ordinary trees with an almost mythical presence, inviting the viewer to imagine that there is more to this world than meets the eye.
Kseniia Chumakova’s Summer Dreams has a subtle tension between the serene, almost cinematic perfection of these images and the realisation that they are fleeting — like a summer that never lasts long enough. They exist in a space between the tangible and the dreamlike — as if they’re both within reach and yet somehow removed from reality.
The portrait, bathed in soft light, creates a stillness that seems almost too perfect, too curated, to belong to the realm of real life. The hands, similarly, are poised with a grace that feels choreographed, like a gesture lifted from a cinematic dream.
Much like the subconscious, which reveals both darkness and light, Chumakova’s work speaks to the dual nature of dreaming. It reminds us that within the labyrinth of the mind, there are moments of clarity, when we find ourselves bathed “at the bright side”. Through these artworks, Chumakova creates a space where the idealised and the real coexist, blurring the lines between what we can experience and what we can only dream of.
Known for her contemplative and introspective approach to portraiture, Lidiia Golovina’s photo series “Unseen” captures an ethereal beauty, inspired by both cinema and ballet. The veil serves as both a refuge and a frame, symbolising the boundary between the tangible and the intangible, the earthly and the otherworldly. It draws us into a space where reality and surrealism blur, where we can be both certain of what we see beneath the transparent veil and simultaneously surrender to the imagination, allowing it to shape our perception.
There is a haunting quality to the images, as if the heroine is caught between two worlds, lingering in a moment of transition. The photographs do not simply depict the human body; they explore the idea of identity as something fluid, constantly shifting between visibility and concealment, balancing a desire to be both vulnerable and protected.
What makes Dream Art so beautiful is that it invites us into a realm where we believe we can shape our experience, yet we never truly know what we’ll encounter. In this space, the unfamiliar emerges not as a threat, but as an invitation to explore, to embrace the unpredictable nature of the mind. As Louise Bourgeois famously said, “I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful”. This quote encapsulates the essence of the exhibition: it is through confronting the chaotic, the unknown, and the dark corners of our psyche that we find not destruction, but a raw and complex beauty.
Location: Eight Squared Gallery, CT20 1RN
Dates: October 16–18, 2024
Artists: Diana Kozlova, Elena Timokhina, Anastasia Rak, Kseniia Chumakova, Alina Saffron, Lidiia Golovina, Varvara Strelnikova.
Curator: Narmina Askerova