Collection «Stozhary». Body as Mannequin

On July 9, 2019, the Ukrainian fashion designer Ruslan Baginskiy conducted a presentation of his debut couture collection during the Paris Couture Fashion Week. Especially for this fashion event, the Crimean-Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska made a series of soap busts that became the mannequins for the presentation of the headgears from the «Stozhary» collection. Also the full-sized sculpture from the series «Carpe Diem», which had been created in 2017 together with Kulikovska's muse and husband – Oleh Vinnichenko, was used. The soap busts for the Baginskiy's hat collection were also made together with Oleh.
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This collaboration between Maria Kulikovska and Ruslan Baginskiy became the third artist's collaboration outside the art industry – in fashion. Despite the absolutely different character of the presentation and functions of Maria Kulikovska's sculptural works, the artist continues to rethink and mark spaces with her sculptural clones. The soap busts that have been created especially for the Paris Couture Fashion Week are the results of a successful experiment of MKOV Studio with the new non-sculptural materials. Flowers as inside elements of the filling of sculptures have been used for the first time in these six busts. The end result had the desired effect. Ruslan Baginskiy saw the sculptures already during the installation of these works in Paris.

Collaboration of Ruslan Baginskiy with MKOV Studio is the important project, because the coming together of the designer's accessories and the artist's art objects – the conflict sculptures-autobiographies, sculptures-copies, performative sculptures that are transformed, deconstructed, destructed, and even are exterminated – is a specific way for the compatible dialogue, where the body as object. The body as mannequin.