In creepy international news, there's an art installation in the Ukraine that doubles as a matchmaking service. "Oooo," all you current and former art history students might say, "I enjoy art and maybe it'd be cool to meet someone who obviously shares my interests." (At least, that's what you'd say if you've never seen Dress to Kill and knew that only bad things happen after an art museum rendezvous.) Well, this Ukrainian art installation isn't quite like that — it features sleeping women (or women who are artfully feigning sleep), all of them waiting patiently for kisses that will rouse them from their torpor. If they are kissed awake, they are contractually obligated to marry the kisser. For real.


The installation, hosted by the National Art Museum of Ukraine, will go on for three nail-biting days, during which viewers can stroll right up to the sleeping women and creepily watch and breathe heavily all over them. It's gross. Nobody is obligated to kiss (or to "wake" from a kiss), but, viewers and exhibits alike have signed contracts stipulating that, if a proffered kiss does induce an awakening, the two parties will get married. According to Ukrainian-Canadian artist Taras Polataiko, the exhibit's organizer, nobody is obligated to kiss, but every kiss carries the very real possibility of immediate and legally binding matrimony:

Everybody, any viewer, will have to sign the contract, which says if – this is very important, because nobody has to – 'if I kiss the beauty and she opens her eyes while being kissed, I marry her.'


Sleeping women were chosen earlier in August. Polataiko told the Telegraph that, in creating the exhibit, he'd hoped that someone would find "a real love connection," which might well happen, especially if certain participants are particularly susceptible to the idea of serendipity or the narrative structure of fairy tales. It's probably not a bad way for the acutely lazy to meet, either, because who really wants to go through the trouble of meeting and talking to some stranger when you can simply repose and wait for that perfect someone who has the freshest breath and the least-chapped lips to steal your heart?

Sleeping beauties seek fairytale love at Ukraine art installation [Telegraph]