I’ve loved pigeons since childhood - for me they hold life at its most concentrated, in a creature that’s vulnerable and pushed to the margins. So vulnerable, in fact, that the ‘flying rat’ has been rebranded as a cute little stress toy. I turn that toy into a sacred object, a physical stand-in for the miraculous.

My starting points are monstrous forms - conjoined twins, a three-headed serpent - made using surgical needles and sterile suture thread, the same kind of material used during my child’s surgery. I’m asking the viewer to look into the unconscious, and also to look down at their own feet, which is often the harder thing to do, and to accept what they find there as a miracle. That miracle exists whether or not you love it, or accept it.

I release the pigeons - transformed, standing in for the monstrous Other - back into the everyday life of Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Will recognition happen? Will acceptance? Can a pigeon’s own effort turn what looks like a glitch in perception into the miracle of otherness? Can a human’s?