«Fluffy Nightmare» is a children’s horror quest in which fear exists not as a threat, but as an exciting game of imagination. The project invites participants into a dark fairy tale space where familiar childhood images suddenly behave differently: fluffy animal faces stare at you from the depths of darkness — white, almost ghostly, emerging from the black background suddenly and unexpectedly.
The quest’s identity is deliberately rendered in black and white. Black becomes synonymous with night, uncertainty and fog, while the white silhouettes of animals are flashes of presence, moments of contact with the viewer. The absence of colour heightens the sense of anxiety and focuses attention on shapes, glances and facial expressions. The faces look both soft and frightening: rounded lines and fluffy contours are combined with frozen eyes, as if the animals are watching from their hiding places and are about to disappear back into the darkness.
The central characters of the project are two images that directly refer to Russian classic fairy tales — «the hare without a hut» and «the hedgehog that did not come out of the fog». These figures are reimagined characters from «The Hare’s Hut» and «The Hedgehog in the Fog», but in a dark, horror version. Here, the hare is not just a character who has lost his home, but a creature forever stuck in the night, deprived of a safe space. The hedgehog remains in the fog, unable to reach the light and warmth, becoming a symbol of loss and anxious anticipation.
«Fluffy Nightmare» walks a fine line between cute and scary, familiar and frightening. The project does not shock, but gently introduces the child to an atmosphere of controlled fear, allowing them to experience it as an adventure. It is a dark fairy tale of modern times, where fear is part of the game, and fluffy characters become guides to a world of night-time fantasies and childhood nightmares that can be overcome and left behind.