(from the series KILL ME PLEASE!), 2024
iron, velvet, recycled beaver fur
180 x 205 x 180 cm
Transcription from the audio guide written by Alina Kleytman:
They breathe.
They feel.
They remember who they once were.
Allow me to introduce:
The Baroness—or rather, the face of the Baroness.
Ah, she, a living metaphor of “refinement,” was convinced
that our Diva was nothing more than a riot of makeup,
giant underwear, and orange-tinted pomp.
She called her “the queen of harvesters,”
and claimed that beneath the orange mane was nothing but a country tractor.
She. Dared. To doubt.
Kill me, please…
But she is not killed.
She is an exhibit.
She is a trophy.
She is a warning.
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.