Cosmodreams Presented “Dinner in Red” at ART021 Shanghai
At the 13th edition of ART021 Shanghai 2025, contemporary artist Marina Fedorova presented Cosmodreams with “Dinner in Red”, an immersive concept that turns the banquet table into a stage for reflecting on contemporary society. The concept confronts themes of excess, performance, and the fragile relationship between nature and modern culture, inviting audiences to consider how spectacle and consumption shape collective experience today.
The exhibition space wass designed like a theatrical stage set, where visitors enter through a round portal – a threshold into another dimension. Inside, deep red walls enveloped the space, complemented by a checkered floor and windows resembling dark theatre lenses. Red, as Fedorova explains, embodies the color of love, life, and appetite, but simultaneously represents danger and desire – a duality that permeates the entire exhibition.
All artworks in “Dinner in Red” were lenticular prints created by layering two paintings into one, causing the image to literally shift as viewers move around them. This transformation mirrored the exhibition’s central theme: nothing is stable, everything is constantly changing. What appears beautiful at first can suddenly reveal something darker underneath. An exploration of the illusion of control and luxury, and how quickly that slips into the grotesque. The shifting surfaces become metaphors for our relationship with desire and consumption, demonstrating how easily beauty and destruction coexist.
Each lenticular artwork featured its own AR story, bringing the paintings to life through moments of transformation. Notable works include “Trash Madonna,” where drones circle a saint-like figure above an ocean of plastic; “Octopus Girl,” featuring a young woman confronting a giant creature with surveillance cameras on its tentacles; “Ten Suns,” where day turns to night as suns move across the sky and a spaceship approaches; and “Cake,” where sweetness transforms into decay. These digital layers allowed visitors to explore hidden narratives within each artwork, encouraging active participation.
“I want my art not only to reflect contemporaneity, but also to prompt genuine reflection —the search for meaning, authenticity, and honesty with oneself,” Fedorova explains. Through her innovative use of lenticular technology and augmented reality, the artist transfers her ironic vision of modern society, creating what she describes as “a poetic provocation” rather than a moral lesson. “Dinner in Red is not only about beauty but also about awareness — about how what we consume, both visually and emotionally, transforms us,” she states. The installation functioned as a cognitive laboratory where art, technology, and emotion mix, offering “a final toast to a world devoured by its appetites”.