ALEXANDRA ABAKSHINA/PISTOLETOVA
When Self-care is Not Enough.
No Mirrors Beauty Salon
(St. Petersburg, Russia)
While No Mirrors Beauty Salon acquired its own premises in May 2021, it is still interested in establishing itself in different places and environments, observing how action and its setting format one another. During Art Prospect, detailed artistic set pieces and costumes will take over the salon. By getting rid of the haircut as a service, the salon will radically and completely cleanse art of any predicates of service/necessity/mutual aid.
“We believe that haircuts are as vital as air and should be free. At the festival, we will have an opportunity to make that dream a reality. Sets, costumes—the whole environment is meant to make the process a little theatrical, to draw in potential viewers who may unexpectedly find themselves talking to us and even engaging in collaboration.”
— Alexandra Abakshina/Pistoletova
Alexandra Abakshina/Pistoletova is a director, curator, performer, and hair stylist. Her interests include mimesis, the body, intimacy, dirt, drag, new releases, impossible bodies, male pregnancy, and hospitality. She is the cofounder of the post-anatomical theater MAAILMANLOPPU (2017) and One-night Stand (2019), as well as an employee of n i i c h e g o d e l a t (The Research Institute for Doing Nothing). Abakshina/Pistoletova studies and practices theater as contact, not immersion. She compares her plays to pop-up books, where mountains, forests, and flowers open up, taking the place of characters, and ideas become apparent (often physically so). She is the founder of No Mirrors Salon, a gallery, hair salon, and stage called to build upon the legacy of unconventional art, as well as put feminist theory into practice.