Afterfire
Plicnik Space Initiative•Oct 14, 2025 — Oct 18, 2025
Artwork Checklist
More Exhibitions at Plicnik Space Initiative
Similar Exhibitions
Guestbook
Press Release
It’s an especially sunny day for October, yet I find myself inside. I’m dusting off my mom’s old Windows XP laptop for a light-hearted sesh of nostalgia. I open The Sims, my save file, which is now over twenty years old, is pristinely preserved on the hard drive. Booting into my ‘most recent’ plot, I find a modded house, modelled after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s “Amusement Palace.” My character is Stalin—historically accurate, as he once made the ‘miniature’ palace, located on the wall of the Kremlin, his domicile—I make him do the dishes.
Alexei’s son, Peter—AKA the Great—engaged himself in a similar form of play as me. At the royal lodge, he commanded an army of playmates, dubbed his “toy army,” drilling them in mock manoeuvres and parades. Child’s play hardened into something more serious; the boys eventually became some of the most disciplined soldiers in the Russian Empire. In this context, play was a dress rehearsal for sovereignty. Just as I move Stalin from room to room and…
Exhibition Space
Links
Metadata
Claims

Afterfire
Plicnik Space Initiative•Oct 14, 2025 — Oct 18, 2025
Press Release
It’s an especially sunny day for October, yet I find myself inside. I’m dusting off my mom’s old Windows XP laptop for a light-hearted sesh of nostalgia. I open The Sims, my save file, which is now over twenty years old, is pristinely preserved on the hard drive. Booting into my ‘most recent’ plot, I find a modded house, modelled after Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s “Amusement Palace.” My character is Stalin—historically accurate, as he once made the ‘miniature’ palace, located on the wall of the Kremlin, his domicile—I make him do the dishes.
Alexei’s son, Peter—AKA the Great—engaged himself in a similar form of play as me. At the royal lodge, he commanded an army of playmates, dubbed his “toy army,” drilling them in mock manoeuvres and parades. Child’s play hardened into something more serious; the boys eventually became some of the most disciplined soldiers in the Russian Empire. In this context, play was a dress rehearsal for sovereignty. Just as I move Stalin from room to room and…


















































