Augmented Nonreality: Beyond Return
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, F7W8+WC
NOV 2025
solo show by Evgeniya Bolyukh
Evgeniya Bolyukh
artist
Evgenia Bolyukh is an interdisciplinary artist from Moscow. She is a graduate of the Free Workshops at MMOMA in the “Contemporary Art” program and the British Higher School of Art and Design (Foundations of Fine Arts). She has been a resident of the Winzavod studios and of the 11th season of Winzavod Open Studios. Her work explores themes of fragility, trauma, and everyday life, with particular attention to human inner mindsets and their vulnerability in a rapidly changing contemporary world.
Selected exhibitions include: Salt. Pepper. Personal, Ground Solyanka (2025); Inside the Dollhouse, Winzavod (2024); TEMPERATYRA_5, CTI Fabrika (2024, Moscow); Freedom of the Absurd, CTI Fabrika (2024); a—s—t—r—a open vol.4, a—s—t—r—a Gallery (2024); Bye New Year. Bye Adults., Gallery 11.12 (2024); Out of Town, 19 DEVYATNADTSAT’ Gallery (2023).
Selected exhibitions include: Salt. Pepper. Personal, Ground Solyanka (2025); Inside the Dollhouse, Winzavod (2024); TEMPERATYRA_5, CTI Fabrika (2024, Moscow); Freedom of the Absurd, CTI Fabrika (2024); a—s—t—r—a open vol.4, a—s—t—r—a Gallery (2024); Bye New Year. Bye Adults., Gallery 11.12 (2024); Out of Town, 19 DEVYATNADTSAT’ Gallery (2023).
Special gratitude to:
Aroma Ubud for trust and letting me in to this great location;
Nyoman Setiawan for being true soul artist. Your help with frames, understanding my need of imperfection and letting use images of your masks in BW/BWR series - all of it was huge;
Alexandra Pribilean for sharing this non-random moment and supporting my art.
This exhibition represents an address to a long-time close friend after a twelve-year separation. The objects presented are not so much a personal statement as an attempt to capture the symbiosis of memories of a place that has changed over that time. By analogy with local offerings to the gods, I present to the island my souvenirs and artifacts of lost time—objects that record memory and events of the present, both in my country and on the island. Through them, I connect temporal gaps and geographical distances, as well as differences in interpretations of familiar forms, symbols, and cultural codes.
The works in the exhibition were created on the island of Bali and partly brought from the artist’s home country. Some were begun in one cultural context and completed in another. This decision was intentional—as an attempt to establish an invisible connection between the objects not only conceptually but also geographically. In this way, the works themselves carry two distinct cultural codes. It is difficult for me to separate the influence of Indonesia on my formation as a person from the influence it has had on me as an artist. This inseparable experience becomes part of the method.
Being limited in freedom of expression for various reasons, this text does not claim to provide an exhaustive explanation of the project. It merely sets a direction for perception. I rely on the viewer’s sensory experience and the textual cues that allow them to construct their own narratives and interpretations.
The works in the exhibition were created on the island of Bali and partly brought from the artist’s home country. Some were begun in one cultural context and completed in another. This decision was intentional—as an attempt to establish an invisible connection between the objects not only conceptually but also geographically. In this way, the works themselves carry two distinct cultural codes. It is difficult for me to separate the influence of Indonesia on my formation as a person from the influence it has had on me as an artist. This inseparable experience becomes part of the method.
Being limited in freedom of expression for various reasons, this text does not claim to provide an exhaustive explanation of the project. It merely sets a direction for perception. I rely on the viewer’s sensory experience and the textual cues that allow them to construct their own narratives and interpretations.
For the exhibition, it was crucial to go beyond the white cube and place the works within a local context. Various location options were considered—a hotel room, an abandoned space, an open garage on a busy street. These options were ultimately discarded either for contextual reasons or due to the impossibility of interacting with the space’s owners.
All the works in the exhibition allow for dual readings and can be interpreted differently by the island’s locals, tourists, and viewers familiar with the cultural codes of my country. In the end, I was able to come to an agreement with Made from the Aroma Ubud pastry shop. This encounter proved to be key: a space of everyday pleasure, consumption, and visual appeal became the precise conceptual framework for a project that integrates into it, creating tension between the festive surface and inner states of melancholy, anxiety, and loss.
I accept such coincidences as part of the process, in the spirit of the Jungian understanding of synchronicity.
The exhibition does not have a hierarchy of beginning or end. The works are woven into the space subtly, becoming part of the environment and of each other, forming a unified field of intersections and overlaps.
All the works in the exhibition allow for dual readings and can be interpreted differently by the island’s locals, tourists, and viewers familiar with the cultural codes of my country. In the end, I was able to come to an agreement with Made from the Aroma Ubud pastry shop. This encounter proved to be key: a space of everyday pleasure, consumption, and visual appeal became the precise conceptual framework for a project that integrates into it, creating tension between the festive surface and inner states of melancholy, anxiety, and loss.
I accept such coincidences as part of the process, in the spirit of the Jungian understanding of synchronicity.
The exhibition does not have a hierarchy of beginning or end. The works are woven into the space subtly, becoming part of the environment and of each other, forming a unified field of intersections and overlaps.
On the shop counter sits a bottle of Bintang beer. In the Indonesian context, it is a sign of everyday life, a tourist marker, and a symbol of bodily relaxation and a local brand. However, for a viewer familiar with the cultural codes of my country, the star is a symbol loaded with historical memory and ideological tension. The sign continues to exist, but its meaning ceases to be fixed. Thus, the Bintang bottle becomes a point of intersection between cultural codes, times, and modes of memory, demonstrating the impossibility of a universal reading and emphasizing a state of geographical and historical displacement.
This mechanism of meaning transfer is characteristic of anyone entering a new environment. Regardless of the object of interpretation, perception always remains subjective and, in a sense, distorted. A person transfers their own augmented reality into a different space, enriched with prior local experiences and knowledge. In this context, augmented reality is not a digital technology but a fundamental mode of human existence. The project Augmented Nonreality: Beyond Return captures a private form of such augmented unreality, intertwined with other realities of this metasystem, conventionally called life.
This mechanism of meaning transfer is characteristic of anyone entering a new environment. Regardless of the object of interpretation, perception always remains subjective and, in a sense, distorted. A person transfers their own augmented reality into a different space, enriched with prior local experiences and knowledge. In this context, augmented reality is not a digital technology but a fundamental mode of human existence. The project Augmented Nonreality: Beyond Return captures a private form of such augmented unreality, intertwined with other realities of this metasystem, conventionally called life.
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Bintangku, ready-made, acrylic, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
The You may say embroidery was made in Bali. I doubted whether my memory had failed me. Perhaps it only seemed to me that the song was widely known on the island. That same evening, as I began working on the embroidery, during dinner in a fairly tourist-oriented place, the very first song performed by the guitarist was Imagine. Synchronicity did its work, and I continued with the piece.
The three-part embroidery of lines from John Lennon’s Imagine—“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but…,” “I hope someday you will…,” and “And the world will live as one”—is deliberately deprived of its key words. This rupture functions as a glitch, registering the impossibility of a coherent utopian statement. Embroidery, traditionally associated with care and patience, is used here as an act of violent editing. The red thread loses its connective function and becomes a gesture of censorship, anxiety, and inner tension.
In the Indonesian context, Imagine remains part of a global humanist archive, whereas in my local experience the figure of the dreamer and the idea of a unified world become sources of pain and disappointment. The omitted words become more significant than those that are spoken, pointing to the loss of a language that, until recently, made it possible to speak about the future without irony or fear.
The three-part embroidery of lines from John Lennon’s Imagine—“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but…,” “I hope someday you will…,” and “And the world will live as one”—is deliberately deprived of its key words. This rupture functions as a glitch, registering the impossibility of a coherent utopian statement. Embroidery, traditionally associated with care and patience, is used here as an act of violent editing. The red thread loses its connective function and becomes a gesture of censorship, anxiety, and inner tension.
In the Indonesian context, Imagine remains part of a global humanist archive, whereas in my local experience the figure of the dreamer and the idea of a unified world become sources of pain and disappointment. The omitted words become more significant than those that are spoken, pointing to the loss of a language that, until recently, made it possible to speak about the future without irony or fear.
Wooden frames containing Balinese masks play a particularly significant role in the exhibition. The masks were created after models by the local master Nyoman Setyawan, whose family has been producing ritual objects for sacred ceremonies for generations. I was given a unique opportunity to work directly with the master through dialogue and a shared process. The masks are not decorative: they function as mediators between worlds, carriers of ritual roles and cultural memory.
The frames are made of local wood. Visually, they resemble relics due to their imperfections. The poleng pattern reflects the Balinese principle of Rwa Bhineda—the simultaneous existence of opposites. A row of beads on the frames, some of which are missing, records the incompleteness of transmission, the loss of connections, and the impossibility of a total cultural translation, creating a parallel with the history of my country. Rwa Bhineda is not merely dualism, but a teaching about how opposites merge into a unified whole, giving rise to the universe.
Meanings of poleng colors:
Saput Poleng Rwa Bhineda: the classic black-and-white checkered cloth. It reflects the fundamental philosophy of duality.
Saput Poleng Sudhamala: a black, white, and gray checkered cloth. Gray symbolizes the space between extremes—a neutral force that balances the two opposites.
Saput Poleng Tridatu: a black, white, and red checkered cloth. Red symbolizes the active, creative, and passionate energy of the god Brahma, the Creator.
The frames are made of local wood. Visually, they resemble relics due to their imperfections. The poleng pattern reflects the Balinese principle of Rwa Bhineda—the simultaneous existence of opposites. A row of beads on the frames, some of which are missing, records the incompleteness of transmission, the loss of connections, and the impossibility of a total cultural translation, creating a parallel with the history of my country. Rwa Bhineda is not merely dualism, but a teaching about how opposites merge into a unified whole, giving rise to the universe.
Meanings of poleng colors:
Saput Poleng Rwa Bhineda: the classic black-and-white checkered cloth. It reflects the fundamental philosophy of duality.
Saput Poleng Sudhamala: a black, white, and gray checkered cloth. Gray symbolizes the space between extremes—a neutral force that balances the two opposites.
Saput Poleng Tridatu: a black, white, and red checkered cloth. Red symbolizes the active, creative, and passionate energy of the god Brahma, the Creator.
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
The poleng textiles depict two figures from Balinese culture selected by Nyoman—Bedahulu and Topeng Besus. Nyoman took part in the making of the frames for the series and, despite his virtuoso mastery as a woodcarver, fully understood my desire to create something imperfect and, at first glance, perhaps disharmonious. It is precisely in this non-ideal state that I see true harmony.
Tourists often arrive here carrying their own preconceived ideas about the island and its inhabitants, with little desire to engage more deeply with the local context. This can, of course, be explained by a wish to escape everyday bustle for a sunny island endowed with utopian and overly positivist qualities, where tourists begin to press their palms together in a namaste greeting indiscriminately and are genuinely surprised when someone on the island attempts to deceive them—because in paradise, no one deceives. Such patterns of behavior are aptly described in Erlend Loe’s novel The Best Country in the World. This mindset allows the souvenir industry to endow its products with imagined sacrality and historicity through the skilled work of artisans.
In a rapid search for truth, we lose its meanings and replace them with lighter, more easily consumable substitutes that skillfully mimic authenticity while making no demands on our time or effort. I observe the growing dominance of theatricality over genuineness in many aspects of contemporary life; this is less a trait of a new generation than of the time we inhabit—a time in which slowing down requires considerable effort, yet is precisely what is necessary for a thoughtful understanding of what is happening.
Tourists often arrive here carrying their own preconceived ideas about the island and its inhabitants, with little desire to engage more deeply with the local context. This can, of course, be explained by a wish to escape everyday bustle for a sunny island endowed with utopian and overly positivist qualities, where tourists begin to press their palms together in a namaste greeting indiscriminately and are genuinely surprised when someone on the island attempts to deceive them—because in paradise, no one deceives. Such patterns of behavior are aptly described in Erlend Loe’s novel The Best Country in the World. This mindset allows the souvenir industry to endow its products with imagined sacrality and historicity through the skilled work of artisans.
In a rapid search for truth, we lose its meanings and replace them with lighter, more easily consumable substitutes that skillfully mimic authenticity while making no demands on our time or effort. I observe the growing dominance of theatricality over genuineness in many aspects of contemporary life; this is less a trait of a new generation than of the time we inhabit—a time in which slowing down requires considerable effort, yet is precisely what is necessary for a thoughtful understanding of what is happening.
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
BW/BWR wooden frames, watercolour and wood, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
To the left of the BW/BWR wooden frames is Penenangkap mimpi. It incorporates beads from bracelets purchased on the island during my first visit, as well as gray hair that I have been growing since 2022. Through the use of objects from different periods of my life, I thus unite two entirely different temporal and spatial states of a person within a single object.
As in the case of the Bintang beer bottle, dreamcatchers are very common as souvenirs brought back by tourists from the island. This souvenir can hardly be called local, as it is in fact a traditional Native American talisman. According to belief, the hoop with a web at the center of the dreamcatcher captures bad dreams while allowing good ones to pass through. Notably, during the photographic documentation, a real—albeit small—spider made its way toward the dreamcatcher. The spider within a dreamcatcher is a central element, symbolizing wisdom, protection, and a connection to the world of dreams.
Just as the dreamcatcher, which does not exist within Balinese tradition, mimics an authentic souvenir, the dreamcatcher in this work is itself not authentic and is incapable of performing its intended function within the given coordinates.
Penenangkap mimpi, mixed media, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
The object was placed next to a traditional Balinese ornament, Tamiang, made from young coconut palm leaves, and echoes it in form. Tamiang is used in traditional ceremonies, especially during the Kuningan festival, as a symbol of protection. Thus, two talismans with a similar protective function against ill intentions stand side by side, yet the latter does not enjoy popularity among visitors to the island. One is in its proper place at the right time; the other does not belong to this place, yet remains harmonious.
Penenangkap mimpi, mixed media, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
The shop space also includes objects from the project Melancholy: cherries brought from Moscow, chaotically placed near the counter, and cherries on charred wooden supports integrated into a display case with decorative elements. These fragments coexist with attributes of celebration, registering a state of melancholy as a way of inhabiting reality without the possibility of pause or healing.
Melancholy, epoxy, burned wood, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, burned wood, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, burned wood, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, burned wood, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
Melancholy, epoxy, burned wood, 2024, Evgeniya Bolyukh
The final objects of the exhibition is a series of two works, each framed with PVC film. The works include graphic images of a Huntsman spider, an overexposed light filter, and an insert from a Love Is… chewing gum wrapper bearing the phrase, “Love is… sometimes being confused.” The spider is not a metaphorical image but part of the local Balinese reality, where this species is widespread.
When confronted with something unfamiliar and threatening, this species of spider tends to stretch its legs into a horizontal line, becoming less visible. It mimics and protects itself despite not being entirely harmless to many species, including humans. A tourist may never encounter this spider and can live in an imagined paradise where everything is beautiful and harmless—loving something that is partly fictional and imagined. The philosophy, culture, and religion of the island call for the acceptance of dichotomies as a means of living reality more honestly and experiencing it fully. I fully share this view.
When confronted with something unfamiliar and threatening, this species of spider tends to stretch its legs into a horizontal line, becoming less visible. It mimics and protects itself despite not being entirely harmless to many species, including humans. A tourist may never encounter this spider and can live in an imagined paradise where everything is beautiful and harmless—loving something that is partly fictional and imagined. The philosophy, culture, and religion of the island call for the acceptance of dichotomies as a means of living reality more honestly and experiencing it fully. I fully share this view.
Something confusing, mixed media, pencils, 2025, Evgeniya Bolyukh
