visible_invisible

© 2023-2025
Michelle Dolgorukova

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Social Practice Psychological Project

VISIBLE_INVISIBLE

A project created in co-authorship with Maxim Timofeev

When you were growing up, your body was pure movement.

It ran, it fell, it touched the world —

without thinking about how it looked.

And it was so long before the moment when you learned to look at yourself.

A project about the dark night of the soul and the desire to be born anew.
About the moment when you no longer want to be yourself —
not in this body,
not in this life,
not in this situation.
A point where everything familiar begins to collapse.
This collapse is the zeroing.
But every zeroing is followed by renewal —
when the old layer that no longer breathes falls away,
and only what is most alive remains.
An inner rupture becomes a point of strength.
The moment you want to disappear is the moment something real begins.

stage “0” — returning to the body

stage “1” — opening the eyes

darkness, hiss, hum, interference.

Start.

Abort.

Start.

THE CORE OF “VISIBLE_INVISIBLE”
VISIBLE_INVISIBLE is a journey into the depth of the female soul — into her thoughts, her body — and into the internal split between what a woman shows to the world and what remains hidden within.
It is a project about visible women and the problems that often go unnoticed.
About how outwardly we may seem stable, strong — visible — while pain, fear, or untapped power remain invisible to everyone around.

The author is currently completing a Master’s thesis at the Faculty of Psychology of Creativity, Saratov State University. The project has been carried out with the support of the American international organization Art of Health.
At its foundation is a phototherapeutic act connecting the image of a woman with the image of a birch tree: each participant, removing the bark-mask from her face, releases pain and returns to herself.
The first stage of the project was presented at the Mars Contemporary Art Museum.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid confronting their own souls.”

— C.G. Jung

FORMATS OF THE PROJECT
VISIBLE_INVISIBLE is a multi-layered work that brings together several media forms — each a way to pass through an renewing zeroing.
The installation consists of:

a series of photographic diptychs (woman and birch);
a sound installation “The Collective Voice” (stories and confessions spoken by participants during the phototherapeutic act);
a video installation “The Language of the Body” (created by Maxim Timofeev, capturing author Michelle Dolgorukova physically embodying the stories of women who could not show their faces);
written testimonies (personal recordings of difficult moments);
social practice – a mailbox (the final step of immersion: leaving one’s own story, the viewer becomes an active participant in the shared act of renewal).

At the core lies the phototherapeutic act — a series of photographs where a woman merges with the image of a birch.
She applies a special solution to her face, mimicking bark.
During the shoot she removes this layer, just as a birch sheds its thin outer skin.
As the mask comes off, she lives through her emotions, memories, releases inner pain, and tells her story.
These images are therapeutic both for the participant and for those who later meet her gaze in the photograph.
The audio installation “The Collective Voice” consists of stories and confessions recorded during the shoot.
Women share intimate memories, fears, revelations — we hear whispers, laughter, tears, pauses.
These voices flow into one another, creating a trance-like effect.
A recurring beep interrupts the confession — sometimes grounding the listener, sometimes highlighting a revelation.
Distinguishing one voice from another becomes difficult — a single collective female voice emerges, in which the viewer hears themselves.
The video installation speaks the language of the body.
On a large screen a woman moves slowly.
She dances to the music of her own feelings.
Each gesture, tilt of the head, tremor of the hands tells a story.
There are no words — the body speaks for itself.
A figure might curl inward, hiding, and then open, reaching upward — a path from pain to liberation.
This language needs no translation; the viewer senses each moment as if living it themselves.
The written stories are confessions recorded in the first person.
They deliberately contain no names or biographical details — only the essence.
Because the anonymity allows anyone to step into the narrator’s place.
In short paragraphs: the moment a woman rejected her body; a fear that followed her since childhood; a love she was afraid to reveal.
Finally — the interactive element: a mailbox.
A quiet invitation to participate.
At the end of the exhibition stands a small box, with empty sheets, envelopes, and a pen.
Anyone who has passed through this journey may write a letter to themselves or to the project.
A response, gratitude, or a secret long held inside.
Some write only a few words, some — a story.
Some fold a silent note filled with unspoken pain.
This symbolic gesture completes the circle: the viewer makes the invisible visible.
The mailbox fills with the voices of the audience, and the project continues to live through those who moments earlier were only observers.
“Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light, but making the darkness conscious.”
— C.G. Jung

OTHER FORMS OF THE PROJECT
VISIBLE_INVISIBLE extends beyond the exhibition.
Over time it has grown into a book with stories and photographs, become a stage performance, and even taken the form of a group therapeutic session.
In every format the core remains unchanged: guiding a person through a metaphorical cycle of death and rebirth, helping them see the invisible and emerge renewed — to live through the dark night of their soul.

Light inside appears only when you pass through the black.

Through nigredo — the alchemical stage of dissolution.

THE KEY OF THE PROJECT — THE BIRCH

“Like any true story, mine goes back to childhood.

My story quite literally took root in a birch tree planted by my grandfather before I was born.One day he saw it in the forest, fell in love with it, and decided it had to grow at our dacha. I grew, and the birch grew with me.

I touched it as something ancient and wise, spoke to it.

Every year I noticed how effortlessly it shed its thin layer of bark.

How natural and simple it was — to let go of the old, the unnecessary, the expired.

I thought: how beautiful it would be if people could release the old just as easily, and renew themselves.”

— M. Dolgorukova

The birch became the symbol of the project — an embodiment of the natural cycle of renewal that women forget.
We begin to feel foreign in our own bodies; we forget their nature — to bend, to change, to renew, like nature does.

P.S.
For the first exhibition space at the Museum of Contemporary Art, that very birch had died — perhaps its roots reached groundwater that destroyed it, or perhaps it lived exactly long enough for this project to be born.
Now it lives forever within the project and in every woman who encounters it.

WHERE WE SEE THE VISIBLE AND FIND THE INVISIBLE
A spatial black-and-white installation existing in two states:
Visible — theatrical light on photographic diptychs (woman and birch);
the stories of the participants;
the mailbox where viewers leave their confessions.
Invisible — the darkness of the hall, where the hidden layer is revealed:
the video installation,
the secret messages that appear only in the dark.
Before entering the invisible zone, you are greeted by the poem “Demon.”
A threshold into the unnamed.

Demon

dedicated to M. Vrubel

What if the hungry beasts we cage inside,

What if the shadows sharpen whilst we sleep,

If it's just us, unloved, we learn to hide,

And all those sleeping questions burrow deep.

The guitar rings, my trembling fingers play,

The fire flares up in hell-blue, licking flame;

Let all your demons step into the ray —

We know, in truth, there's only us to blame.

What if my voice still finds you in the night,

In that last dark before the breaking day,

When one small “why” steps forward, burning bright,

And asks if meaning lies beyond our way.

Who'll still this flood of love that isn't there,

Why call my name and act as if you care?

I'll walk through hell beside you, if you dare,

Turn to your demons; truth will meet you there.

ON THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROJECT
VISIBLE_INVISIBLE was born at the intersection of art and psychology, rooted in research in the psychology of creativity (the subject of the author’s graduate thesis).
The project is built on the belief that creativity can be deeply therapeutic — a way to know and transform oneself.
When we create or experience art sincerely and physically, we engage in dialogue with the unconscious — and from this dialogue emerges understanding that rational thought alone cannot reach.
The ideology of the project resonates with psychological and philosophical concepts:
creation requires destruction; for the new to emerge, the old must be released.
Before insight illuminates the mind, one passes through chaos — when previous structures crumble (zeroing) and consciousness prepares to receive the new (renewal).
Participants of the project go through this literally: descending into the darkness of their feelings, letting go of familiar self-images, and emerging renewed.

mishadolgorukova@gmail.com