Michael Banifatov 305x32

Celestial bodies and fruit bodies are very similar. Juicy universe in the process of decay. Flemish still life in the ionosphere.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I'm learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly. As the light lies on these white walls.

I have nothing to do with explosions. I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour.

Nobody watched me before, now I'm watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips. I have no face, I'm a cut-paper shadow. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, and I'm aware of my heart: it opens and closes. It's bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

(From "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath)

Environment, the water world through the eyes of paragliders in love. Childhood, flights, love, distant shores, the attraction of the earth and of the native lagoon. Wars, epidemics, tsunamis and ecology catastrophes, a world of big money and merchant ships - all this is still there, outside, in the movies and books, but the thick air is motionless, it portends a storm and very soon all of this will break into the closed world of the lagoon. Or not? And the girl has already put on a mask. Fly over the lagoon, brave man, and may the strength of the headwind keep you.

"Ya zdes Jivu" - an ode to rented accommodation for new repatriates from Israeli photo artist Michael Banifatov.

He left... Is everything okay? Yes, everything is OK, I found a job. I work hard, a lot. But satisfied. I can make my dreams come true. Rented an apartment. Everything is good, near the sea. Light. A lot of sun. I live here.

Michael Banifatov, visual artist, photographer. Born and raised in Russia, in St. Petersburg. In 2019, he emigrated to Israel. The project "Ya zdes jivu" (which means "I live here" in Russian) is also his personal experience. In his photographs, ordinary and unremarkable interior details and household items are endowed with almost sacred meaning. "Apparently, this is how a person's Faith manifests itself. In this case, faith in a better life, in one's life, with a considerable dose of fetishism," the artist comments with irony. However, everything here is quite serious, and Mikhail touches on the theme of the fragility of the inner world of a person in the process of detachment from the familiar environment or, in other words, rebirth. Here, from insignificant details of living spaces, we move on to tactile and internal sensations of place and time. It is with a new, still quite raw to the touch, environment flooded with sunlight, where there is an immediate need to feel at home. And even if it's the first available space, not familiar, not very cozy in the domestic sense, but already yours. The place you have already acquired, barely detached from the still native, other home, already, however, alien.

"In the formula 'I live here,' I emphasize 'here,' meaning 'not there anymore', indicating that this is an irreversible path” – the artist says - “Everything is fine, the sea is nearby”.