The very angry Caterpillar: residency art project by Tonya Melnyk and Masha Ravlyk

After 3-years ongoing rehabilitation process of the State Silk Museum, 1st public event was organized at the museum’s basement. It was a one-evening textile exhibition and meeting with Tonya Melnyk and Masha Ravlyk, artists and activists from Kyiv, who are now hosted in the Silk museum residency. In their show, they decided to focus on problematic aspects of silk production, highlight these facts and make them unforgettable. It is an essential addition to the museum’s contemporary art archive.

When Masha was 11 they visited the exhibition of batik things. They remembered some fragments from the excursion, for example, that the cocoon is placed in soapy water to unwind, and the pupa dies. How many thousands of deaths follow the train of a silk dress? While doing the research on the collection Tonya was shocked with not only cruelty of silk production but also with exploitation of human and nature resources.