Baba Yaga (“Bah-bah Yah-gaah”) is a mythological figure found in Eastern European folklore, especially Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Sometimes a singular entity, sometimes three sisters, sometimes a multiplicity of beings, Baba Yaga is an ancient witch who resides deep in the wilderness.

Baba Yaga is a complex character with an ambiguous role in Eastern European stories: she may eat you alive, or she may save your life with an enchanted talisman or wise council. She is technically female, but often depicted with male attributes. She is known to reward brave hearts, hard workers and clever thinkers; and to punish those who are prideful, lazy, and weak-willed. Her magical power extends beyond the edges of time, and she is said to control the Thread of Life itself. Baba Yaga’s home is an intelligent, autonomous hut on chicken legs (“izbushka na kuri’ih noshkah”), and her primary mode of transportation is a flying mortar and pestle.

She has crept into modern American consciousness via books such as Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with Wolves, Taisia Kitaiskaia’s Ask Baba Yaga, and various films, TV series, comics, and videogames.

Baba Yaga is rising a defiant contemporary symbol of resourcefulness, matriarchal wisdom, queerness, and empowerment.

Baba Yaga’s Post-Soviet Kingdom refers to the liminal space inside our psyches that exists in-between ideologies, economic systems, geopolitical boundaries, and historical timelines.

This is the space between socialist utopian dreams and capitalist realities (or is it the other way around?) This is the space between imperialism and self-determination; creation and destruction. This is a space of paradox, crumbling walls, broken systems, and the ferocious songs of hearts colliding and breaking open.

This is a space of re-building, re-wilding, re-imagining, and re-birth.

Like any fairytale realm, this Kingdom can be a place of healing, wonder, and joy - it can also be a treacherous terrain full of bewilderment, violence, and corruption.

The only way to traverse these lands safely is to first travel inwards, deep into the roots of the nervous system, where our spines have kept the dances our minds have long forgotten. It is here that we receive the wise council of the Old Crone herself - the bony, ancient Baba Yaga, She Who Knows, She Who Sees Beyond All.

For now, I am creating community workshops, immersive events, and an art exhibit of paintings, costumes, and artifacts that dance at the intersection of contemporary post-Soviet identity and Slavic folklore.

I have many ideas and dreams for the future, so please check back or sign up for my mailing list to learn more.