«I am never alone in any process. The creation of work is also cooperation—with ideas, with myself, with colleagues, and with suppliers.
I cooperate with viewers in ephemeral communication. Teaching is cooperation with methodology, with the student, with colleagues. Cooperation with the world, cooperation with possibilities: any circumstances can be collaborators, ” says Panika Derevya, describing her approach to creativity. Panika works as an independent author, using clothes as her basic medium and researching themes as bearers of symbolic and philosophical meanings. At the same time, she cooperates with other artists, getting involved in their works as a costume designer (for example with the artists Taus Makhacheva and Mikhail Tolmachev) or as a director (with the singer Jekka). Panika also teaches regularly in higher and supplementary education, promoting the idea that visual culture cannot be divided into art and fashion. The aim of the meeting at Garage is to present cooperation to the viewer as an artistic and life strategy and to use selected projects to look at this idea through a series of individual choices.
