AES+F

AES+F's Digital Safari: Fables of the Jungle unfolds as a sumptuous and unsettling fable set within a digitally fabricated rainforest. Six young performers appear as animal–human hybrids: Wolf, Tiger, Vulture, Black Jaguar, Pallas's Cat, and Hyena. Wearing elaborate masks and couture-like costumes, they inhabit a world suspended between ritual and spectacle, seduction and threat. Here, disguise does not conceal identity but amplifies it, transforming fragile bodies into figures of authority and desire.

Founded in Moscow in 1987, AES+F is a collective consisting of Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky, and Vladimir Fridkes. Renowned for large-scale video installations and hyperreal digital tableaux, the group combines references from classical painting, fashion photography, mythology, and contemporary media culture. Their works frequently explore beauty, violence, consumerism, and the ambiguous relationship between fantasy and reality.

In Digital Safari, the rainforest functions less as a natural habitat than as a theatrical setting. The performers evoke mythological creatures and allegorical figures, while their poised gestures and frontal gazes recall the artificial elegance of mannerist portraiture. Nature itself appears staged, a luxuriant backdrop populated by creatures that seem at once ancient and entirely contemporary.

Sound plays a crucial role. Mozart's Lacrimosa from the Requiem is reinterpreted by composer Vladimir Rannev for a mechanical music box, turning a familiar lament into an uncanny loop of repetition. Beauty and mourning become inseparable, suggesting a contemporary vanitas in which luxury, spectacle, and vulnerability coexist.

Rather than offering an ecological warning or a straightforward narrative, Digital Safari presents a world of contradictions. Human and animal, innocence and aggression, intimacy and performance merge into a dazzling masquerade that reflects the ambiguities of life in an age of digital images and environmental uncertainty.

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