TO THE ONE WHO WILL OVERCOME
17.08.2024 – 15.09.2024
Asya Zaslavskaya's project in the art residence
Asya Zaslavskaya's project in the art residence
The starting point of Asya Zaslavskaya's project is a phrase by Andrey Batashev, left as a will to his numerous heirs in response to the question of who will get everything: "To the one who will overcome." The words of the head of the family, which sound like a challenge, many years later resonate with the industrial context of the modern city - the constant desire to go beyond the boundaries of possibilities and become something more.
The works created by the artist in the art residence are based on historical artifacts and archival data that do not remain untouched, they are updated by the artist without unnecessary nostalgia and become modern objects confirming the fragility and selectivity of human memory.
The tile from the collection of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant History Museum has long since lost its utilitarian function, and the drawing from it, transferred by Asya to the icon board, emphasizes the value of our visual experience, which we are ready to carefully preserve and turn to in search of some stability, rootedness in our own history and the history of the place. The title of one of the three paintings for which the first woman to graduate from the Imperial Academy of Arts, Sofia Sukhovo-Kobylina (daughter of the manager of the Batashev estate) received a large gold medal in 1854, also refers to a specific place - "Pine Forest in the Vicinity of Murom". The painting was painted based on sketches from Vyksa, but was lost, and Zaslavskaya shows us one of the modern views of the forest, which seems to have remained the same.
The inevitable change of things, as well as the environment, pushes us to search for new meanings: images of old maps of the Vyksa region no longer tell us about a specific location, but become abstract canvases, and a quick glance at a wall with scraps of modern paper advertisements makes it an abstraction too.
Asya Zaslavskaya's artistic projects are aimed at creating, revealing and
materially fixing the relationships between the past, present and future. "The search for man, questions of religion, local socio-cultural narratives create both existential and ironic objects. In many of my works, I study the manifestations of memory in the present. The search for connections between the past and the present becomes a reason for thinking about the future."
The works created by the artist in the art residence are based on historical artifacts and archival data that do not remain untouched, they are updated by the artist without unnecessary nostalgia and become modern objects confirming the fragility and selectivity of human memory.
The tile from the collection of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant History Museum has long since lost its utilitarian function, and the drawing from it, transferred by Asya to the icon board, emphasizes the value of our visual experience, which we are ready to carefully preserve and turn to in search of some stability, rootedness in our own history and the history of the place. The title of one of the three paintings for which the first woman to graduate from the Imperial Academy of Arts, Sofia Sukhovo-Kobylina (daughter of the manager of the Batashev estate) received a large gold medal in 1854, also refers to a specific place - "Pine Forest in the Vicinity of Murom". The painting was painted based on sketches from Vyksa, but was lost, and Zaslavskaya shows us one of the modern views of the forest, which seems to have remained the same.
The inevitable change of things, as well as the environment, pushes us to search for new meanings: images of old maps of the Vyksa region no longer tell us about a specific location, but become abstract canvases, and a quick glance at a wall with scraps of modern paper advertisements makes it an abstraction too.
Asya Zaslavskaya's artistic projects are aimed at creating, revealing and
materially fixing the relationships between the past, present and future. "The search for man, questions of religion, local socio-cultural narratives create both existential and ironic objects. In many of my works, I study the manifestations of memory in the present. The search for connections between the past and the present becomes a reason for thinking about the future."