The KRITZ photo series — circus in reverse — is about the traveling Art-Fly circus tent. The project was photographed over two seasons (spring-autumn 2015-2016).

The exhibition runs from February 17 to March 7.

The circus tent is one of the few theatrical forms preserved in its original form since the time of its emergence. While theatre invents a hundred ways to displace theatricality (strong naturalism, documentary), the traveling circus occupies one of the city’s vacant lots, covers it with a bright canvas tent, and creates a zone of pure playful spontaneity.

Since the days of fairs and street booths, the skirt of the tent has marked a boundary beyond which life, with its ordinary course, loses its rights. Here one can allow oneself to laugh at things one usually does not allow oneself to laugh at. Forget the laws of physics and give way to fascination with incomprehensible wonders.

By its nature, a traveling circus is forced to absorb the folk energy of the place where it stops. To enter into direct contact with it. Yes, most often this contact turns out to be simple, pointed, and satirical, devoid of half-tones. But it is always very honest and alive, without speculation or contrived elitism. In the circus tent, a spectator can easily become a participant in a clown reprise, climb up under the dome during the intermission and look at the arena through the eyes of an aerial gymnast, or have a photograph taken with an exotic parrot on their shoulder. The circus tent seeks out its audience and comes directly to them.

And at the same time, the traveling circus is a city within a city. Entering into dialogue with a changing world, it is conservatively distinctive, encased in the armor of tradition. The small circus troupe lives by the laws of the guild of wandering comedians, as eternal as the dust of the roads along which its trailers travel. Simplicity and familial casualness reign here in the relationships between the performers and the “uniform.” Here everything is bright and vivid. Instead of everyday life, meager in impressions, the dome of the circus tent offers a vivid concentrate.

The KRITZ project is about a place where time has stopped. About how a fairy tale is formed from simple elements of everyday life, and childhood enters into a struggle with adulthood, refusing to debunk a trick known for centuries. About people who live their everyday lives inside a festive shell.

text: Olena Mihashko