2021 · video performance, 5:42

The video was shot on the banks of the Vuoksa River during the Ahola.land festival in June 2021. The idea came like a mirage: you drive past a vast field in bloom and think how wonderful it would be to run across it. The summer solstice, the peak of nature’s blossoming, gave the inspiration and the chance to create this work.

The work is built as a collective practice of connecting with nature. Julia Sharkina led a somatic practice for her two partners. She filmed some of the shots with a handheld camera, others were filmed by drone.

The cycles of the year, and the time of Kupala in particular, are among the artist’s most beloved periods. With this work she wanted to reveal the fertile, beautiful power of nature. Nature here is full, like the film’s heroine, who walks naked across the field, fully aware of her perfection, her power, her abundance and her freedom to interact.

Concept and editing director: Julia Sharkina
Performers: Julia Sharkina, Anastasia Melnikova, Daria Nogovitsyna
Video and photography: Julia Sharkina, Anna Prokhorova, Nikita Bezrukov
Music: Isabelle s0.any (live from Ahola)

The essence of summer is bubbling life. The solstice is its boiling point.

We walk barefoot and bare. The field gently preserves our traces. Our bodies remember every blade and leaf. Steps become paths—one after another, again and again.

We came to meet each other. Our bodies speak without words; they sing a hymn to summer. Our movements flow into one another, becoming a single, many-faced essence.

We form a circle, spin faster and faster, dance without restraint—until the world merges into a fierce, crystal-clear essence.

We are witches and graces. This is the ancient magic of the solstice— we carry in our hearts the very essence of life from this day. The present becomes the past, imprinted forever like a shutter click. The river, the field, the dance, the light, the summer—here, they will never cease.
— text: Anna Pastukhova, art historian, researcher (Freie Universität Berlin)