The doll, the smaller reflection of the human figure, is a timeless and universal object. It appears in every culture, in various forms and materials. Dolls are omnipresent and fulfill a wide range of functions and meanings.

Dolls are often baby figures made of porcelain or plastic which are used in educating and teaching children about motherhood, fertility, and the cycles of life. Additionally, in many cultures, they function as mediators between nature and culture, between past, present, and future, and between the spiritual world and reality. In Western horror films, the doll takes on a satanic edge, serving as a creepy metaphor for innocence and vulnerability, pitted against the terrifying dark forces of cruelty that enchant and destroy it.

As puppeteers, we take control: we guide the dolls, determining their ethics and morality. We step outside ourselves and manipulate our reflection. In this divine position, we make choices: to be nurturing or cruel, soothing, or punishing, loving or hateful.

In Wake Up, Look Up, Stand Up, Lyudmyla Razbitskaya reverses this relationship. In her dollhouse, it is the dolls that guide us. Innocent yet tormented baby dolls shape our fate. This series of artworks marks a kind of Slavic renaissance in her oeuvre. This visual rebirth began when she first saw the angels surrounding Fouquet’s Madonna. For Razbitskaya, the red and blue spiritual figures took on an esoteric function: they possess guiding power, are inspiring and whisper into the Madonna's ear what she must do. The chubby child figures are in control.

This reversed role between doll and human forms the core of Razbitskaya’s artistic exploration of freedom. Where we usually exercise control over the dolls, we are now the ones that are being guided. The hierarchy between the human and the spiritual blurs, giving her space to explore new meanings of freedom.

Throughout her entire career, and specifically in this exhibition, ideas about freedom and the ways we shape this concept are especially important. Her current life in the individualistic West stands in sharp contrast to her past in the collective communist atmosphere of her homeland. This tension is an important part of her artistic identity. With Wake Up, Look Up, Stand Up, Razbitskaya captures this process: a search for freedom, where the boundaries between control and surrender, manipulation, and liberation, are constantly shifting.

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