(from the series KILL ME PLEASE!), 2024
iron, velvet, recycled beaver fur
103 x 140 x 72 cm
Transcription from the audio guide written by Alina Kleytman:
Welcome the ex-finalists of reality!
Half-living monuments to defeat!
KILL ME PLEASE
And this is the Leg of the Unknown Soldier
(or, as the Diva called it — “My Little March!”)
Ah, it was a leg with character. Once — firm, disciplined, ready to march for the Motherland, for the flag, for the myth. But one day it took a wrong step — it dared to doubt the diva. Not directly, of course. It simply didn’t stomp the floor joyfully enough when she entered.
Magnificent, forgotten, compliant.
On its chest — a scar. Inside — despair.
On its lips (if it had any) — an eternal plea:
“Please, just kill me already.”
But the Diva only laughs. And in that laughter — eternity.
Description/commentary
In the series KILL ME PLEASE!, Alina Kleytman stages a grotesque masquerade of decadence and decay. The sculptural ensemble—writhing forms of iron cloaked in velvet and reclaimed beaver fur—suggests creatures caught mid-contortion, elegant and suffering. Their fleshy silhouettes and wiry appendages point to a hybrid of animal, object, and ornament, caught in an eternal pose of discomfort. KILL ME PLEASE! is both a plea and a performance: theatrical, absurd, and tragic. Kleytman’s hybrid bodies embody the contradictions of pleasure and pain, seduction and surrender, exploitation and excess. These are not passive objects, but witnesses—begging to be seen, touched, consumed, and ultimately destroyed.