Maria Karol presented her multimedia installation 1,2 … 12, whose central media object is a 3D space, a quest game that enables a viewer to take a virtual tour of Vyksa using a keyboard and a mouse.

In her work, Maria Karol explores various media, such as sculpture, printmaking, installation, performance, photography, and video footage, and creates 3D spaces. 'Using LiDar software I scan real-life urban spaces and recreate them in 3D,' the artist explains. 'During my residency in Vyksa, I was interested in exploring the town through the lenses of gaming aesthetics, turning real-life locations into computer game exploration spaces, transforming them and adding something new.'

Regardless of the chosen media, Karol's artworks have always been oriented towards space and the sensations it evokes, but her Vyksa project has moved onto a new level, entering the dimension of time. The number of the exhibition's elements is the multiple of 12. It features 12 art objects made from yarn reminding the onlooker of clay and stone tablets — ancient historical documents. The 'woven' silent tales imitate undeciphered descriptions of some events. The game or the 3D space created by Maria also has 12 levels. The artist transformed the exhibition hall as well by drawing fragments of art over the spots where the paint had peeled off the walls. According to her, those drawings were meant to appear like they had been there already thus enhancing the sensation of connection with the past.

Apart from its time-related significance, the number 12 was chosen by the artist owing to its mythological, religious, and even mathematical significance. 'At such unstable times, I felt it was important to "ground" myself and find a foothold. I decided to make the number 12 central to my research. Not a word but a number, order, calculation, rhythm. This is something definite and reliable. The number 12 is manifold, people in different eras attached different meanings to it and I also came back to it,' explains Maria Karol.