The World of Hedonia

On New Year’s Eve, I made a wish to immerse myself forever in the sensations that I experienced while taking tranquilizers. I wanted to fall into a sweet sleep and not face reality anymore.

In an effort to forget myself, I was trapped in a depressive hedonia, which Mark Fisher described in Capitalist Realism as an inability to do anything other than the search for pleasure. In this series, I depict different types of pleasures and the states associated with them. I create still lifes and environments from objects and substances that are associated with something pleasant and seductive, and sometimes creepy. The doll appears to be my alter-ego, living a New Year’s experiment.

Nika Sandler was born and lives in Moscow. She studied at the school of modern photography Docdocdoc and Fine Art. She has been working on personal projects since 2020. She was published in the magazine Bird in Flight.