EKATERINA LAZAREVA
There's no here
"The tiniest authentic fragment of daily life says more than painting"
Interval
Classics and Revolution. Mayakovsky
Rise windows
What we dream
Just say no rainbow
The journey from St.Petersburg to Moscow
1/1,000,000
Migrants
Untitled (dedication to Russian Cosmism)
March 9
Political Minimal
Camera Play
The trace
Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen
History lessons (Monument to Dzerzhinskii)
Return
Dates
Passato prossimo, or Present absent
video, 5 min
Railroad ties blurred on speed are beaded on steel rail threads, the verticals tend to the ground, all details are abolished. The camera captures the ordinary landscape of central Russia running over outside the train window accompanied by the artists voice over. The reflection about the territory in time and state borders cannot unroll into direct political statement, but turns under the mind-lulling hypnosis of the wheels into emotionless recitation of present and absent categories, a meditation on what is there and what is not there. The text of confession and of auto-training at the same time can be read as a commentary on the landscape and/or on its signified - the actual Russia of the time of the strengthening reaction, in which there is no future, social responsibility and sustainable development, although there is time, and space, and voice. EL
Exhibitions: Metageography: Space – Image – Action, curated by Nikolay Smirnov and Kirill Svetlyakov. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Sep 25, 2015 – Feb 7, 2016; Pushkin House, London, Sep 7 – Oct 11, 2017; Metageography: Orientalism and Dreams of Robinsons, curated by Nikolay Smirnov and Kirill Svetlyakov. Zarya Center for Contemporary Art, Vladivostok, Oct 10, 2018 – Jan 13, 2019.
Publications: Metageography: Space – Image – Action (exhibition catalog)/Smirnov N., Svetlyakov K. eds. Moscow, Department of Research Arts and Triumph Gallery, 2016. ISBN 978-5-906550-47-7. P.126–127.
Stills from video
"The tiniest authentic fragment of daily life says more than painting". 2014
outdoor stands, 85x150
"In her art projects, – according to curator Andrey Parshikov, – Ekaterina Lazareva focuses on everyday chronicles and laboriously studies ordinary life to show the present "at arm's length", proportioning big and loud social subjects, whether they are questions of migration, female identity, or inner questions of art and its language, to human scale and personal experience."
The site-specific public-art project, titled with a quote from W. Benjamins essay "Author as Producer", is presented in the public space of the Muzeon Park on stands, usually used for official city expositions and coming from tradition of Soviet visual propaganda. A series of 43 images unexpectedly presents documents of private life the spreads from the artist's Moleskines: a spontaneous expression of unintended combinations of useful information and thoughts, routine and ambitious plans, expected and happened. Notes flowing into shopping lists, election observers counting of votes and deadline calendars, interrupted by children's drawings and other absurd combinations that mark everyday life, where the personal is inseparable from work, and the artistic from the social. A document of the struggle between will to knowledge, time management and irreversible dissipation of energy. EL
Exhibitions: Ekaterina Lazareva: "The tiniest authentic fragment of daily life says more than painting", curated by Andrey Parshikov. MUZEON Park of Arts, Moscow, July 3–20, 2014.
The ongoing photography project is organized as a regular inspection of a specific accidentally-found space, where the passage of time reveals itself in the visible transformations of the place – the phases of organic growth and natural deterioration, the stages of architectural reconstructions, the pace of economic development. To date, two inspections have been carried out following the results of the zero inspection in 2008, the third inspection is scheduled for 2023. EL
Publications: Ekaterina Lazareva Interval, in: Laboratoriya Vremeni. Tom 1. Annual Ring, Evangely A. ed. Moscow, 2017. P. 135–141.
Classics and Revolution. Mayakovsky. 2013
video, 4 min Trailer
The video consists of a series of short episodes in which the artist recites Mayakovsky's revolutionary poems through a megaphone at iconic locations of Moscow protests. Continuing after The Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow the initiated dialogue with the revolutionary tradition of Russian literature, rejected by post-Soviet Russia as an ideological relic, the artist proposes to think of an appeal to the past as a call to the future, inspired by Marina Tsvetaevas famous remark that we and maybe our grandchildren too will have to turn to Mayakovsky not back but forward. The future-in-the-past inexorably overtakes mere mortals, reminiscent of W. Benjamins description of the angel of history, whose staring gaze is chained to the past, while a storm blowing in from Paradise irresistibly propels him into the future (On the Concept of History). EL
Exhibitions: KINO-FOTO-LYUDOGUS. Mayakovsky and art avant-garde of the world in documents and cinema-materials, curated by Galina Antipova and Vitali Patsukov. National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, May 16 – Jun 18, 2013; Protest, or Video-is-removed-for-violation-of-the-rules-concerning-nakedness-or-the-maintenance-of-sexual-character, curated by Maria Godovannaya, Grey Corridor Etazhi, Saint-Petersburg, Aug 29 – Oct 29, 2013.
Still from video
C-prints on adhesive film, 156x68
Text compositions with quotations from Vladimir Mayakovsky are placed in the windows of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA), outside the exhibition space, and, unlike Mayakovsky's ROSTA Windows, they are addressed not to passers-by, but to those who are inside. Fitting into the architecture of the building, reconstructed on the project by Mikhail Khazanov and inspired by Soviet Constructivism, and thus mimicking the design element and the communication message of the institution itself, the windows are designed to work as a kind of avant-garde vaccination, a double protection (a mystical talisman and a rational advocacy) from the ongoing campaign against the NCCA, initiated by the new cultural elite (that resulted in factual liquidation of the NCCA after "optimization" in 2016). EL
Exhibitions: KINO-FOTO-LYUDOGUS. Mayakovsky and art avant-garde of the world in documents and cinema-materials, curated by Galina Antipova and Vitali Patsukov. National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, May 16 – Jun 18, 2013.
interactive installation: 3 metal beds (180x70x80), 3 matrasses and 3 pillows in waterproof covers, filled with earth
The project inspired on the one hand by the ideas of Russian Cosmism, in particular Fedorov's idea of the physical resurrection of ancestors, and on the other hand by the history of Soviet cosmonautics, namely, the fact that young Yuri Gagarin lived underground with his family for several years during the war, while their house was occupied by the Germans, invites the viewers to explore their own fear of death and their own longing for the sky. The environment of the room, resembling dormitory, maternity ward, or, perhaps, a training base for the conquerors of space, evokes Ilya Kabakovs installation "NOMA" with hospital beds, however, here the viewers themselves become the "work" – they personally experience it and comment on. Lying on earth, whether it is conciliating or disturbing, is proposed to be understood as an exercise, training, adaptation - a pause that can be followed by a flight. Such tactile and intimate contact with artwork and other viewers provides the sense of the real, which seems to be an urgent humanitarian need in times of virtual communications rush. EL
Invitation text (PZh): Lying on earth gives not rest only, but an exercise, training, adaptation as well. Its prenatal time in the nature and prenatal time in culture. Its the day when snowdrops did not make way yet, the day when Yura overcame gravitation and saw the blue planet in all its beauty and the attractive boundless blackness of still unknown, but inescapably calling and straightening. The metal beds in the room. It is a hospital or delivery room? It could also be the Up! Hostel mobile in its anonymity. The beds are not signed. The smell of soil is of all people, former and future, descendants and ancestors, brothers, sisters. Probably it is a training base of the Space conquerors in a damp earth-house in Klushino when olfaction and touch open sight and send it up. We invite you to walk barefoot on a grass that we dream of.
Comment by Sergey Guskov: "When it was rather noisy and crowdy in the showroom, I was long sitting and laying there; there was the ideal atmosphere for communication. We discussed the soil smell, the perspectives of Russian mass media closures etc. From time to time I went online. Such, almost intimate communication and Wi-Fi were extremely pertinent here. But the time ran, and I decided to leave. Sitting in the subway with a known critic, I felt cut from the network. And I dont mean Wi-Fi."
Comment by Maria Pokrovskaya: "The discomfort from a contact with the common tarp was quickly replaced by a feeling of rest and revival at the same time as if the passive lying indeed could be followed by flight."
Exhibitions: Ekaterina Lazareva. What we dream, curated by Petr Zhukov, Brown Stripe Gallery, Moscow, April 12, 2013.
The series presents photographs found on the net and processed in the spirit of a parody on the Russian current political agenda, namely, the law adopted in 2013 by the State Duma prohibiting propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors. The law interprets such relationships as a challenge to the spiritual foundations of society and even a threat to the security and territorial integrity of the country and, obviously, discriminates against the Russian LGBT community, whose representatives can easily be accused of propaganda due to the vague wording of the law. The artist discolors color photographs depicting a rainbow, satirically playing along with jealous guardians of morality in the theater of the absurdity of Russian politics, when, for example, a State Duma deputy accuses children's institutions named "Rainbow" of "propaganda". EL
Publications: View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, special issue "Warsaw/Moscow: Monuments of Transition", Pijarski K. ed., Warsaw, 2015.
The journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. 2012
video, 29 min 45 sec, series of graphics, 20 x 30, C-prints. Video link
"The Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" is an open form project that has been presented variably from film screening to multimedia installation, a series of graphic works and anti-censorship stickers. The project addresses the eponymous novel from 1790 by Aleksander Radishchev, sentenced for it to exile in Siberia, – the work, which is usually associated with the beginning of Russian critical and dissident literature. The artists repetition of Radishchevs route, filmed along the highway "Rossiya" (St. Petersburg – Moscow) in locations that change from summer till spring, frames the rereading of "Journey"s text, in the post-Soviet era removed from the school program, the conversations with literary critic Andrey Kostin and historian Ilya Budraitskis, and video documentation of the protest actions of 2011–2012. The travel in time extends from Radishchev to the current moment, when Russian society is acutely facing the same problems of lawlessness, authoritarianism, censorship and political repression, while the demand for civil rights and freedoms and the possibility of revolutionary changes turn out to be just as illusory. Stickers with Radishchev quotes, which sound extremely relevant in the context of Pussy Riot process and the extensive attack on freedom of speech and independent media, were launched in framework of the anti-censorship exhibition, organized by activists of the May Congress. EL
Exhibitions: Anti-censorship posters exhibition. Krasnaya Nov, Fabrika, Moscow, May 15, 2012; No Exceptions. Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Jun 4–24, 2012; Komentatorki/Women Commentators Festival, curated by Katia Krupennikova. National Museum in Warsaw, Królikarnia, Warsaw, Oct 3–26, 2014.
carbon drawing on paper, 30x20 (charcoal on paper, 86x61, version of 2014)
The series "1/1 000 000" was realized as part of the collective project "Portrait of 19 million", organized by the artist Evgeny Fiks and dedicated to people who were members of the CPSU on the eve of its ban in 1991. Along with portraits, project participants were asked to submit filled-in questionnaires of their heroes, answering when and why they joined and left the party. The nineteen characters chosen by the artist represent one millionth of an approximate number of 19 million and are the top Russian authorities by 2011: president Dmitry Medvedev, prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his nine deputies, heads of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the minister of education, head of the presidents administration, vice speaker of the State Duma and general prosecutor. The fact of their membership in the CPSU is omitted from most official biographies. The artist sent official requests to these high-ranking officials to complete the project's standard questionnaire. The responses received are presented along with nineteen portraits: three confirmations of the registration of the appeal, one letter with a useless Internet link, one proposal to contact the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as the official successor of the CPSU and one completed questionnaire. EL
Exhibitions: Impossible Community, curated by Victor Misiano. Museum of Contemporary Art of Russian Art Academy, Moscow, Sep 8 – Nov 6, 2011; Komentatorki/Women Commentators Festival, curated by Katia Krupennikova. National Museum in Warsaw, Królikarnia, Warsaw, Oct 3–26, 2014.
video, 6 min 9 sec. Video link
In "Migrants" the artist appropriates the cinematic language of wildlife documentaries, combining a video representing the observation of the "life" of poplar fluff in an urban environment with the soundtrack to the film Le Peuple Migrateur (2000) by Jacques Perren and Jacques Cluzaud, testing the strength of the ideas of multiculturalism embodied in the film and the poetics of free movement across the borders of countries and continents. The result presents a whole range of questions: in a situation where an attempt to speak for the oppressed turns into an ethical trap, and direct representation is impossible, the usage of an allegory, a metaphor (migrants are fluff) turns out to be even more problematic as the statement on xenophobia and tolerance tries to suggest viewer sympathy for what is usually unpleasant, through a suspicious gesture of dehumanizing the other. EL
Screenings: Speaking by means of camera (public program of Auditorim Moscow exhibition), Belye Palaty, Moscow, 4.10.2011; Me_gration (within Intarnational Migrants Day), Sakharov Center, Moscow, 12.12.2011; Video art program at the VI International Film Festival in the name of Andrey Tarkovsky MIRROR, Ples, 2012; CINE FANTOM New Generation program at the 34th Moscow International Film Festival, October multiplex, Moscow, 2012.
Exhibitions: Kandinsky Prize-2012 Nominee Exhibition. Udarnik, Moscow, Oct 26 – Dec 5, 2012; Rodchenko School. Generation Next, curated by Anna Zaitseva. Multimedia Art Museum MMAM, Moscow, Sep 23 – Oct 29, 2015.
Collections: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
Untitled (Dedication to Russian cosmism). 2011
performance
The performance was realized within an exhibition-walk at a city park organized by artists community "Vverh!" (Up!). Follows the idea of Nikolai Fedorov that the whole earth should be seen as a cemetery, the artist "plants" grave artificial flowers into soil at the park glade, proceeding with the theme of the "training" restoration of life, begun in "Return" (2010). EL
Exhibitions: Nemi, curated by Petr Zhukov. Brown Stripe Apartment gallery and surroundings, Moscow, July 24, 2011.
Publications: Nemi. Vystavka obedineniya "Vverh!" – Openspace, 07/12/2011.
video, 6 min 51 sec; postcards tables, 5070
The time-specific project, opened the next day after the 2011 centenary of International Women's Day, examines the results of the social revolution caused by the women's movement and explores the iconography of "March 8" in visual culture. The "results" are presented in a video filmed the same morning after the day-off, March 9, which captured the feet of passers-by hurrying to work in several locations in Moscow: the right to work, alas, did not free women from daily sacrifices to the altar of beauty, in particular, to walk on high heels on snowy and slippery roads (can this Russian tradition be compared to Chinese foot binding?). Next to the video are thematic tables with Soviet postcards of from 1950s to 1980s dedicated to March 8, which demonstrate the erosion of holidays meaning and a return to the patriarchal understanding of women in their iconography and phraseology. EL
Exhibitions: Ekaterina Lazareva. March 9. Rodchenko Art School, Moscow. March 9–16, 2011.
Publications: Ekaterina Lazareva. Devyatoe marta – Openspace, 05/04/2011.
video, 1 min 45 sec Video link
"Political Minimal" demonstrates the operation of simple low-tech devices – an electromechanical eye trainer and a music box playing "The Internationale", and refers to the aesthetics of early avant-garde cinema, in particular, to Duchamp's "Anemic Cinema". The circular rotation of the black and white sectors causes a hypnotic effect, and the "gentle" version of the revolutionary anthem sounds like a lullaby of the promise of a better future. Both visual and acoustic components lull the mind and dispel the urgent need for political transformation, ironically mimicking the mainstream of political art in Russia of the late 2000s, combining formal minimalism with a safe "political" statement. EL
Exhibitions: Rewriting Worlds: Dada Moscow, curated by Adrian Notz. ARTPLAY, Moscow, Sep 15 – Sep 27, 2011.
video, 2 min 23 sec
The work is included in the 5th issue of the VIDIOT video magazine dedicated to the theme of childhood. Instead of nostalgic reconstructions of the past the childhood here speaks for itself. Most of the video was shot by the artist's 4-year-old son, who is holding a camera for the first time and simultaneously plays with it and explores the expressive potential of video, starting off the adventure of imagery resembling early experiments from the adult history of video art. EL
Screenings: Vidiot#5. Children's issue, urated by Ilya Korobkov and Kirill Preobrazhenky. Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Feb 5, 2011.
video, 4 min 33 sec Video link
An elementary simple video of a footprint drying up on the asphalt is a meditation on the work of time, the inevitability of oblivion and humility with its cleansing role. EL
Exhibitions: Echoes of Eco, curated by Antonio Geusa. Summer Theatre, Sochi, Feb 4– 13, 2011.
Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen (35 years later, Russian version). 2010
video, 5 min 9 sec Video link
Martha Roslers "The Semiotics of the Kitchen" (1974) has been repeatedly remade by her fans – those videos can be easily found on the Internet. Another remake, made by a Moscow artist, presents the Russian version of "The Semiotics of the Kitchen", 35 years later. It is based on the Russian alphabet from A (alcohol) to Ya (I). On the one hand, the image of the housewife and the genre of cooking shows in the post-Soviet context, with its legacy of early female emancipation, are relatively new. On the other hand, working women in Russia are usually not even aware of their gender inequality, which makes the feminist agenda particularly relevant in this context. In addition, the available choice to have both – a family and a career at once – is usually realized at the expense of domestic labor of migrant women. Russian kitchens, like European and American ones, become the stage for a global drama of inequality, presented in the video with objects such as Central Asian kazan (cauldron) for K and Chinese wok for V. EL
Exhibitions: Ekaterina Lazareva. Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen, curated by Antonio Geusa. Video-box program, Art-Academia Club, Moscow, Sep 27 – Oct 27, 2010.
History Lessons (Monument to Dzerzhinky). 2010
C-print on paper, 200100, shelf, chalks, spray cans
The work addresses the odious Soviet monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, erected in 1958 in front of the KGB building on Lubyanka and in 1991 toppled to the approving rumble of a crowd of thousands, and then installed in Muzeon Park along with other outcast monuments of Soviet propaganda. In the 1990s and 2000s, the State Duma repeatedly discussed the idea of returning the "Iron Felix", a symbol of the "bloody KGB guys", to the Lubyanka. In The Lessons of History, the round plinth of the monument, covered with a lot of protest graffiti, unfolds into a flat image resembling a school board, completed with chalks and spray cans. EL
Exhibitions: Lines of Communications, curated by Vladislav Efimov and Vitali Patsukov. National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow. Jun 18–27, 2010; Komentatorki/Women Commentators Festival, curated by Katia Krupennikova. National Museum in Warsaw, Królikarnia, Warsaw, Oct 3–26, 2014.
performance
During the performance, apples from supermarket return to an apple tree, which, in the context of the dacha exhibition dedicated to Russian cosmism, is read as a utopian restoration of life. EL
Exhibitions: Up! (Experimental Paranormal), curated by Petr Zhukov. Different locations in Khlebnikovo, Moscow region, April 30, 2010.
performance
In the performance the artist writes from memory about three hundred dates, which are the reconstructed dates of the vernissages visited, or personal encounters with art. EL
Exhibitions: Personal, curated by Yulia Yastrebova. Eastern Gallery, Moscow, May 15 – 23, 2010.
Passato prossimo, or Present absent. 2010
C-print on transparent film, 50x50, series of 8 works
In Italian there is grammar analogue for Present Perfect tense Passato Prossimo, which is nearest past, a tense that is inextricably linked with the present, but is no longer subject to our will. The photographs document an old Moscow flat on the eve of cardinal changes due to pass away of its inhabitants an empty, inanimate house, all the elements of which are destined to dissipate. EL
Exhibitions: Sense and Sensibility, curated by Ekaterina Lazareva and Kirill Preobrazhensky. ARTPLAY Small Hall, Moscow, April 7 – 15, 2010.
Collection: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
© Ekaterina Lazareva