ARTIST: ANNA SAMOYLOVA
CURATOR: IRINA RUSINOVICH
Address: Bülowstrasse 11, 10789, Berlin
EXHIBITION DATES: 30.09.2022 - 22.10.2022
OPENING: 29.09.2022 19:00 via link at haze.gallery
Everyone's life has changed in the past six months. The news agenda leaves us numb and it is impossible to remain indifferent to what is happening in the world. It is especially difficult when you realise that you cannot directly influence the injustice taking place.
The project POLE is a visual diary that artist Anna Samoylova has been keeping since February 24th. The works in this series convey the artist's inner feelings and her attitude toward the aggressive confrontation that is happening right now before our eyes and without our consent. The linocuts are not literal illustrations, but rather allegorical images that arise as flashes in the artist's memory, under the influence of strong feelings and experiences: emptiness and a familiar landscape, the words of a popular song, a reminder of real-life events - they are like puzzles, put together in a single, elusive image, like the landscape that we see from the window of a rushing train. All the works are made in the same size, in the format of a rectangle, which visually resembles a window leading into another surreal reality, the world of our memories and images. In her work, Anna asks the difficult questions inherent in our time: how to continue to love a country where your voice is worthless? What to do about the oppressive sense of guilt that settles inside many today?
The linocuts in the POLE series include hand embroidery, pearl trim, and prints on grass-dyed fabric in an already signature shade of red for the artist. The choice of this color was once inspired by traditional techniques, but now, in the context of the exhibition, red also becomes a symbol of inner anxiety, a permanent premonition of trouble that envelops us like a sticky fog.
There are no people here, only symbols, objects, and words. This selection of images is chosen intentionally, to give the viewer an outsider's view of the artist's feelings, abstracted from the physiological and corporeal.
ANNA SAMOYLOVA
Anna Samoylova (b. 1995) lives and works in Moscow. In search of national identity, the artist explores the culture of the Russian countryside, everyday life, customs, and costumes, interpreting them in her works. Anna Samoylova's graphic red subjects tell universal stories of women growing up, becoming, and resisting, where modernity and the past, truth, and fiction can mix. Anna treats circulation works as reverently as she does large canvases: she dyes the fabric on which the drawings are made by hand, printing on it and embroidering it.