Helping Hand
2024
"Experience is not what happens to a person, but what a person does with what happens to him." (O. Huxley)
There is an overgrown path ahead, water flows on both sides. Something flickers in the grass. It becomes alarming. Coming closer, you can see a forest of yellow hands frozen over the river. It seems that they are reaching for the sky. Or, on the contrary, they want to pull you to the bottom?
You suddenly notice your reflection. You stand, and around you are hands: they are frozen in anticipation. As if waiting for something. And then you understand that you need to make a choice...
Our world is created in such a way that a person is not able to control all the events that happen. But still, every day you have to make decisions, make a choice. A choice in accordance with your morality and ethics. In the event of a disaster, when all feelings are heightened and primitive instincts are awakened, a person is given the opportunity to truly look at himself, at his actions, at the world around him. He is given the opportunity to make a choice: to lend a helping hand or to close his eyes and turn away? To save or to be saved? To accept his path openly or to hide from its lessons?
A disaster becomes a mirror capable of revealing the true face. It is capable of revealing hidden strengths and abilities or awakening something dark, immoral. And this choice is behind each of us.
Red Anti-Biennale (Krasnenkaya)
Curator Ekaterina Vasilyeva
The Grass is Greener
2024
«Хорошо там, где нас нет»— is the Russian version of the proverb, “The Grass is Greener…” that translates literally to say “It’s Better There Where we are Not”. It means the same, that an ideal world does not exist, no matter where a person goes or what they do.
What is this ideal world that we strive for? Happiness, stability, peace of mind? Hearing these words, we imagine programmed pictures of a family, home-car-work, a peaceful existence. Under closer examination, these concepts are unstable and changingf: a family is a shaky, transforming unit that requires a of strength and attention. A home and a job can be changed or lost at any time. The search for happiness and an ideal world outside ourselves never leads to the desired result.
With the help of a series of three installations that are hovering in the air in extremely “unstable” states, the artist poses questions about “the search for something better,” self-sufficiency and the connection of people with their selves and the world around them.
Installation list:
1) "Mom, Dad, Let's Go!"
materials: bicycle, rope
2) "Home Inside"
materials: wood, metal
3) "Rubber Army"
materials: rubber boots, wood
Place of Creation: Pushkinskie Gory, v. Selivanovo
Past-Present-Gone
2023
Past-Present-Gone
Life is constantly changing. Concentrating on the future, we forget to look around. We fail to look back and see the trace that is left behind. In search of answers, happiness, and meaning we get lost and stop noticing how we missed the “moment”.
In my work, I explore the idea of the relationships and interactions between humans and nature. This installation shows my interpretation of the formation of life on our planet, human evolution, civilisations footprint, possible outcomes and the return to the beginning: a planet with no humans. The barbed wire symbolises universal connection, cyclicities, the concept of time, DNA, our emotional and physical closure, obstacles and pain— all that is encountered on life's journey.
Red Biennale (Krasnenkaya)
Curator Ekaterina Vasilyeva
StarMan
2017
“We are made of star-stuff.” Carl Segan, “Cosmos”
The matter that we are composed of and all the atoms on planet Earth, were produced in red giant stars. The rarer elements were generated in supernova explosions. At the stars’ cores, at temperatures of over 10 million degrees Celsius, hydrogen and then helium nuclei fuse to form elements. As this reaction continues, lighter elements are converted into heavier ones. These same reactions have created chemical elements like carbon oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon… all the way across the periodic table to iron, where the chain ends. The atoms from a supernova disperse throughout the universe, scattering this stardust, creating the atoms that make up every part of you, the Earth, and everyone you have ever known and loved.
This art piece shows the creation of atoms and the preliminary birth of a human from a supernova. A bicycle wheel bent in to a sphere represents a star at the moment of its explosion. The glass beads are atoms, that are being spewed from the sides of the supernova. A figure resembling a human is made out of wire. Inside his body are numerous galaxies. He shouts out from the center of the star, up into the Cosmos.