La Boîte-en-valise (Museum in a suitcase)

Mixed media
2012

The 'Museum in a suitcase' project includes several interrelated parts. The suitcase is filled with some cult objects — rosary beads, candle-end, saints bracelets — mixed with the ‘garbage’ of sentimental value known exclusively to the artist. Having no particular roots, she creates her own fiction biography based on the subjective charm of the objects, combining the religious symbols of the world with the Soviet artifacts.

The ‘Red Corner’ installation is a collective image of the visual environment the artist grew up in. Here ‘The Red Corner’ represents a special place at home where icons were placed and the ‘red corner’ with the leaders’ portraits — typical for Soviet-era institutions — as well as a TV set in the secular space. The 'Contemporary art and I' photo album is made by a naive artist who has encountered contemporary art. With no cultural background whatsoever, she fails to comprehend the art she unexpectedly fell in love with. That is why her ‘memory album’ filled with the pictures of the cheesiest figures in the Russian art world looks like a desperate attempt to adopt the cultural situation. As Ilmira Bolotyan puts it, the cover of the album — ‘Mona Lisa, spitted over by an artist’ — shows ‘how familiarly the naïve audience approaches contemporary art’.