Curriculum vitae

My artistic project is based on the exploration of what we call "our identity". It comes from my story: I lived in Siberia during socialism; when I was 17, I moved to Germany where I spent 13 years, then I went to Italy. These experiences, suspended between different places and cultures, left a vacuum of belonging that I represent with a language marked by traditional symbols of the places where I lived. I elaborate the memories of my past, which assume new meanings when connected to the present. In my art, I try to define a space where reality and imagination are merged in the search for a 'home'.

 

Scheda tecnica

"Hammer and Sickle" is perhaps the most emblematic symbol of socialism, known and recognized around the world. Million people have followed him believing in the ideology he represented. In the Soviet Union it was on the flags, on the streets, on walls of houses and in the heads and the hearts of people. After the collapse of socialism, "hammer and sickle" has lost all its force remaining just a sign of historical memory.
My generation of Russians lived during adolescence the end of socialism and the transition to a new system. For us this symbol, like many other icons of the Soviet Union, has acquired a new meaning in the eyes of memory, devoid of ideology, but full of nostalgia for adolescence now far for us and by definition "happy".
This process of emptying and re-working of the symbols of social, political, religious and cultural history of the past century is a common feature of all later generations grew up straddling two eras.
In this work, Мягкая Игрушка (Mjagkaja Igrushka, Soft Toy), greeting me from the past, is shown with the softness of childhood, no longer hard and severe, but tender, protective and "puppy".