Baba Yaga - Through the eyes of a child
Project Baba Yaga is a piece of Marta's childhood imagination.
Hosted by
This project is now archived and was part of DDW21
This project is part of
Meet the makers, women creating new beginnings
→
Marta returned to her childhood to recreate the story that many Slavic families told children to keep them on the straight and narrow. For her project she used natural ingredients, her drawing skills and a dark atmosphere. You have to look deeper into this story to find out more interesting facts.
The story behind the old, scary women.
Baba Yaga is often represented as little, ugly woman, with a huge distorted nose and long teeth. She lives deep in the forest and flies around on her broom. A witch who kidnaps children and eats them. Isn’t that the kind of story that would scare children?
Many people seem to wonder. Did Slavic families scare their children with the stories of Baba Yaga? The answer is yes ! They did, and Marta experienced it herself.
For her, as a 10-year-old girl, the summer vacation spent in grandmother's old house was wonderful and cruel at the same time.
Sentences like :
"If You Behave Badly, Baba Yaga Will Pick You Up"
"If You Continue to Make A Mess, Baba Yaga Will Eat You"
"Don’t Go Too Far from Home or Baba Yaga Will Catch You"
what her grandmother used to discipline her,
But for Marta as small child they were big. Her imagination was huge from an early age so Baba Yaga in her eyes was a worse creature on the world and forest was a place where she was scare to go..
Now, as an adult woman and all fears are gone Marta finds the slavic stories interesting and she loves forest. Recreating a small part of her world and the world of Baba Yaga was a pleasure and a lot of fun for her !
