Matryoshka Crush (installation version) 2025

single channel video installation with stereo sound
60 minute loop

Matryoshka Crush (screening version) 2025

HD, colour
47 minutes

June 11 to August 16, 2025 at AXENÉO7

photos: ©Melanie Mathieu

Poison, exorcism, gender trouble, song and dance intermingle in this darkly funny and disturbing tale of intense yearning.  When a series of adorable monsters reveal themselves near an old tavern, their ordinary acts transform into a chain of micro-disobediences. 

Matryoshka Crush, a film set inside a makeshift cinema, plays on a loop, while across the centre’s galleries, a series of activations illuminate the allure of theatricality. Moving seamlessly between banal reality and absurdist fantasy, Matryoshka Crush straddles installation, contemporary video art, dancefilm, and personal narrative. 

The film centers around four characters.  Wearing a series of masks, one layered upon the other like Matryoshka nesting dolls, Laura Taler plays KUKERI, BIG HEAD, HAIRY FACE MEDUSA, and LITTLE HEAD.  Each recall, respectively, nature and magic, the old world, female rage, and childlike wonder.  The result is a visceral and material-based performance that tells an unmoored story of bodies out of place, with fuzzy, penetrable boundaries. Hilarious, lusty, and troubling, the actions of the characters orbit around an old tavern, an in-between place to rest, clean, feed, pleasure, and entertain. 

Like the history of the Matryoshka doll, a symbol of Eastern European culture that can be traced back to the Japanese Fukurama doll, Matryoshka Crush magnifies the desire for translation and transformation.  It’s a lament to the old world and how we are enmeshed in one another. Ancient stories linger, but Matryoshka Crushcrushes our crush on narrative conventions, leading to liberation and self-invention.

Credits in alphabetical order:
AYLIN ABBASI Assistant Editor & Data Management | VICTOR ANASTACIO Guitarist | JORDY BELL Sound Mix |SCOTT BROWN Key Grip | YVONNE COUTTS Associate Producer | CONOR DEVRIES Camera Operator | DAVE DRAVES Recording Engineer | MIKE DUBUE Sound Design | ELIA EL HADDAD Sound Recordist | MELANIE FORDHAM Colour Correction | MARISA GALLEMIT Costume Assistance | SANDY HARRIS Wig Construction | STEPHANIE KUSE Credit Design + Special FX | JORDAN MACDONALD On-set Production Manager | ROLAND MARCKWORT Gaffer | MELANIE MATHIEU Stills Photographer | MÉLANIE MYERS Costumes | WASSIM NOHRA Director of Photography | LAURA SCHNEIDER Swing | KELLY SPINELLI Production Manager | LAURA TALER Producer, Director, Performer & Editor | COLLEEN WILLIAMSON Set Decorator | A GRIMM PICTURES production created with the support of OTTAWA DANCE DIRECTIVE, AFFINITY PRODUCTION GROUP, CITY OF OTTAWA, & CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS