Artists are capable of creating their own worlds. In travels or in forced migrations, they seek confirmation of the authenticity and truthfulness of their creations.

The smaller model of the Bakhtovs’ world rests on the banks of the Dnieper-Bug estuary in southern Ukraine. In the south, it is the sandy Kinburn Spit cutting through the estuary and the Black Sea, and in the north – the archaeological site of Olbia, the northernmost point of the ancient Oikumene.

The bigger model is associated with the journey on a replica of the ancient Greek diera, “Ivlia” along the shores of the Black and the Mediterranean seas, the journey which brought about the awareness of the unity of the Mediterranean and Pontic spaces.