The Next Stop — Pionerskaya Street

Aryna Obukh is a writer, artist, graduate of the “Mukhina Academy” and the author of a book about it, as well as about St. Petersburg: almost all her texts are inextricably linked to the city. Her new book “The Next Stop — Pionerskaya Street” is a conversation: with a friend, with the City, with God… With a German man named Leon Schmidt, who heard a song about Leningrad — and set off for St. Petersburg in its wake. A conversation with an artist who has been dead for six years, and with poets who stand with their backs to the prose writer Gogol on Malaya Konushennaya Street. A conversation with death, which wears pink flip-flops, and with Brodsky, who came to Vasilievsky Island (not to die, but simply came). A conversation with you. “We will stop talking about this someday, but not today.” “If I were asked to define the creativity of Aryna Obukh — I would choose the word 'beauty.' This is a case where the creative manner is defined by the place where you live, when the city grows through you and acquires new features. The domes are beautiful against the leaden background and the diffused light, the texts and paintings of Aryna are beautiful. Finally, there is a beauty of everyday life that, like Monet's London fog, is seen by few. Aryna sees. And tells us something.” Evgeny Vodolazkin