Vanadium Bloom, 2022
exhibition-experiment, total installation at CUBE, Moscow

The “Vanadium Bloom” exhibition is a continuation of the “Unstable Connections” summer laboratory, which talks about the connection between computational and vegetative systems.

Some plants growing on polluted soil accumulate metals in concentrations exceeding those occurring naturally by hundreds or even thousands of times. This characteristic is used for the purification of polluted areas. Today, experimental phytomining farms are introduced, where certain metals are harvested for reuse. 

In collaboration with researchers at the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology, the artists conduct the experiment in vanadium mining. Experimental species of red fescue, oat, and white clover are placed in the gallery space. These plants could be used for revegetation of polluted soil. 

In the gallery space, red fescue, oat, and white clover grow in soils containing different concentrations of a vanadium compound — ammonium metavanadate (​​NH₄VO₃). At the end of the exhibition, the plants will be harvested, dried, and ashed, while the collected compounds will be used for the creation of a vanadium electrolyte with its later use in a flow battery.

The exhibition includes the work of artists, biologists, ecologists, philosophers, and scientists and is curated by Posthuman Studies Lab.

More about the project

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Sanatorium for Field Proletariat, 2021
Illuminated sound sculpture, mudbrick, electronics

The work was exhibited at the field show of the “Unstable Connections” summer laboratory in Vyksa. The laboratory was dedicated to the research of Soviet agricultural practices and the interconnections of vegetative and computational systems. The result of the laboratory materialized in the group installation, representing the idea of the vegetational internet. Each participant created a hub based on research in their region, with each hub connected to a single data-exchanging network.

My inspiration for the creation of the Sanatorium for Field Proletariat came from the Soviet method of biological crop protection. In the USSR, there were experimental farms for breeding entomophagous insects that fought field parasites without using pesticides, maintaining ecological balance. 

In the construction of the sanatorium, I used parsnip stems (which I collected at the ash pond of an Omsk thermal power plant), field notes from the plant gathering location (sounds of proletarian insects, living in the field near the ash pond), as well as night illumination. This audio started sounding whenever a person approached the sanatorium.
The night footage of the sanatorium and its first residents.
My diary entries connected with the project, talking about the plant samples, their collection points, my childhood, and the reasons for building a sanatorium for insects.
A publication on the project.
The second sanatorium was built in Omsk after the return from Vyksa.
Main photo: Vera Vishnevskaya

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Plant Travel Agency, 2021
processual project

It all started when I met a plantain lily named Vlad at the Vladivostok Botanical Garden. Vlad was put on the ground along with other plants after weeding. Vlad was classified as an intrusive plant and because I wanted to bring a plant home from Vladivostok as a souvenir, I put his roots in a plastic bag with water and kept him in the hostel I stayed in for 5 days. He had two flights and finally moved to Omsk. Now Vlad grows in a stone flowerpot near my apartment building. In the fall, he bloomed and produced seeds.

The next journey was made by a dandelion, grown on a windowsill in Omsk from a seed. As I was packing for Buryatia to attend a curatorial school, I looked at the baby dandelions in a flower pot and realized that they may wither by the time I come back. I took one of the dandelions with me to Buryatia, where it lived in a glass jar filled with water. I felt great at the Dulan-Datsan and I realized that I can safely part ways with my Siberian dandelion, so I planted it in a flowerpot between stone sculptures of water deities. 

Although plants cannot traverse large distances on their own, people can help them. For me, traveling with plants symbolizes an opportunity to harmonize and empathize with the needs of another living being.

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The Inhabitants of Underwater Gardens, 2021
Ceramics

This series uses the natural shapes of plants and organisms to talk about the inhabitants of disappearing coral reefs and about corals themselves. 

I want to turn to the fine line between organic and non-organic matter and ask: do we consider these organisms to be alive, sensitive, and possessing a certain form of consciousness, as well as the right to live? 

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Three Sisters, 2021
Golubitskoye Art Foundation

The work was exhibited at the show “The World Is Overflowing with Either Rubbish Or Our Memories”. Varvara Busova, the curator of the exhibition, invited the artists to reflect on the local archeological context of ancient recycling and reusing practices from the ritual, economic, and status viewpoints. 
The custom of leaving old spindle whorls in sacred places — altars — was connected to the cult of Moirai — the goddesses of fate, that according to the ancient Greek legends, weaved each person’s fate. In my work, I turn to weaving as a metaphor for weaving one’s fate and to the image of a female breast as a symbol of fertility and new life.

The work is held in a private collection.

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Lullabies for a Hibiscus, 2021
Dedicated to my hibiscus friend that hasn’t been blooming for two years. 

The sculpture series refers to the practices of plant care. Care, that questions its boundaries and practicability. 
This care is most needed for plants removed from their natural habitats: potted plants, tropical plants moved to colder climates, and selectively bred plants.
In my work, I turn to practices of “swaddling” tropical plants for winter, to practices of creating support for climbing plants, practices of pruning and topiary (the training of plants by clipping twigs and foliage to create clearly defined shapes), to practices of bonsai growing, to practices of grafting and bowing of ceremonial trees.

This work started with dialogues with my potted plant, when I wanted to find out why it had stopped blooming and help it, but the deeper I went into my studies of plant care, the less I wanted to influence the rhythms of my plant and the more often I wondered if plants are capable of experiencing depression and what are its causes.

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At the Yarosama Station
Three textile canvases 

The work was exhibited at the Threads show at Flux Factory. The show was curated by an international collective from Bogotá, New York, Manila, and Chicago: Bliss on Bliss Arts Projects, Maleza Proyectos, Nodo 51 Area Cultural, Poets Queens, and Yara Arts Group. The curators proposed to choose a poetic text and make a textile replica of it. 

The three textile canvases — are a replica of Oksana Vasyakina’s poem titled “When We Lived in Siberia”. Siberia is a place of exile, a place of resource extraction, and a place of new construction projects. 

Just like Oksana, I was born and raised in Siberia and I still live there. Woven into the canvases are pieces of Soviet tulle and lace from the apartment, where I have lived with my parents and brother until I was 18 years old.

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“Nursery” Book Series, 2020
Textiles, hand embroidery

The series was exhibited at the “Nadenka’s Textile Library” show at the Omsk Art Museum, and at the “Tenderness as Strategy” at Fliegel in Vladimir. The “Nursery” books talk about childhood and the relationship with one’s mother. The stories were collected during deep conversations, the project participants shared their memories about their homes, and told about their family traditions, rituals, hardships, fears, and hopes. 
Book one: video
Book two: video
Book three: video

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Wet Nurses, 2018
Three textile canvases

The work was exhibited at the 1st Feminnale of Contemporary Art in Bishkek. A group of archeologists has found fragments of unknown animals’ skin. Thanks to morphological features, it was established that those animals were fostering and feeding infant offspring. 
The finding, most probably, is related to the period of a clear division between male and female sexual characteristics and mammary glands were only present in female individuals.

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Invisible Landscapes, 2018
Textiles, hand embroidery

Numerous crosses, notches, markings remind of quotidian tasks that are to be kept in one’s memory: to pay the bills, buy a gift for mom, get groceries, find out about the school, find a used armchair for sale on the internet, call the lawyer, go to the visa office, get the carnival costume and gym clothes ready, call an electrician, order insoles.

Women’s household labor is similar to the meditative practices of embroidery, knitting, and weaving, with the only difference — its results are invisible.

The work is held in a private collection in the USA. 

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Invisible landscapes, 2018
hand embroidery

I began to embroider this canvas two years ago, under the influence of some kind of internal rhythm and the desire to imprint a multitude of one-type movements.

There are plenty of crosses, marks like daily tasks that need to be kept in mind: make an appointment to an orthopedist for Artem, pay for utilities, buy a gift for mom, send a package to relatives, do shopping, clean the flat, pick up Artem from kindergarten, prepare a birthday party, find out about the school, find a medical facility where physical therapy is practiced, find out about repairs in the kitchen, find a chair on Avito, call a lawyer, go to the visa center, prepare Carnival costume for kindergarten, call an electrician, to order the insole.

The woman creates the fabric of domestic, everyday life, but this fabric is so familiar us from childhood, that we feel only its sudden breaks, for example when mother was in the hospital or went somewhere, our usual life was changing: it becomes like fabric with holes.

Women's daily household work have some similarities to the meditative practices of embroidery, knitting, weaving and the main difference that its results are invisible.

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Does Every Girl Dream of a Wedding Dress?, 2018
a series of 6 dresses, hand embroidery

Are gender roles and the boundaries inside of which a woman usually exists, truly intended by nature?
What role do family, surroundings, kindergarten, school, female peers, children’s books, and cartoons play in girls’ identities? What phrases do we most often hear our parents say? And what will we say to our own children?

Texts on the dresses:
A little Princess.
Be polite, girls shouldn't fight.
Don't be a slob, girl should be a homemaker.
Guys don't like smart girls.
When are you going to have kids?
Where are you going with two kids?

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Experiences of Body and Speech Acquisition Through Stumbling, 2017

The work was exhibited at the “No Complaints” exhibition at the Yegorka gallery in Saint Petersburg, and at the “Kavkazskaya Svobodnitsa” in Novorossiysk, Sochi, Krasnodar, and Rostov-na-Donu. 

The work contains two types of documents and two types of poetics — medical diagnoses and children’s drawings. 
Medical diagnoses provide an external, abstract, and anonymous perspective, and the drawings illustrate the internal origins of development stages.

Artyom slowly conquers the paint splotch, the line, moves towards figuration and narrativity, and further towards abstract symbols and schemes. As he acquires speech, he acquires his body. 
Every stumble, every deviation from the norm is carefully recorded in my son’s medical file.

And the more Artyom acquires his body and speech, the more my own body and my own language return to me, separate from my child. However, those are a new body and a new language, enriched by the experiences of participation and deceleration. 

*the works feature Artyom’s drawings (with the author’s consent).

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A Woman’s Purpose?, 2017
(a series of doilies with hand embroidery and lacing)

Doilies are a comfort-creating part of decor but the flipside of this comfort is rarely acknowledged. 
In many countries of the world, women have achieved the right to be educated and to work. However, at home, they still have the responsibility to serve their families. Along with paid work, women have to perform unpaid housework. This is called a double burden. Women cook, do the dishes, mop the floor, clean the windows and plumbing fixtures, they make sure the family members’ clothes are clean, and on top of that, they are responsible for caring for young and sick family members. Quotidian domestic and emotional labor is considered by other family members to be the norm. 
The work has been exhibited at the “Stremleniye k Svetu” at the Kaliningrad Center for Contemporary Art, as well as at the “dis/order. Art and Activism in Russia since 2000” exhibition in Aachen, Germany, with Holger Otten and Tatyana Volkova as curators. 

The work is currently held in the Ludwig Forum collection in Aachen, Germany. 

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The Study of Corporality, 2016
Dedicated to Luce Irigaray and Judith Scott.

Corporeal adventures:
the intercostal,
perineums behind the ears,
nostril holes,
cavities under knees,
visceral arch,
groin areas,
intercostal hoarfrost,
the heath between shoulder blades,
the curtained nape,
the naked Adam’s apple.

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Works from the “Kitchen Textiles” series, 2015
potholders with hand embroidery

Potholders, kitchen towels, placemats, and other textiles are usual gifts for women that underline their “female” destiny and role in a family. In this series, I wanted to show the ambivalence of this role and the hardships of living this “destiny”.
The work was exhibited at the 1st Triennial of Contemporary Art at the GARAGE museum, as well as the “dis/order. Art and Activism in Russia since 2000” show in Aachen, Germany, with Holger Otten and Tatyana Volkova as curators. 

The work is currently held in the Ludwig Forum collection in Aachen, Germany.

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A Work from the “Archeological Monuments of Omsk” series, 2014
installation art featuring found objects, 11 meters

As the snow melts with the beginning of spring, many material traces and artifacts are uncovered that can show what life was like in a certain place during the winter.
All of the objects used in the artwork were found behind an apartment building nearby. 

The work was exhibited at the “LUDA” gallery in Saint Petersburg at the “HOROSHO. The New Art of Omsk” show, with Petr Beliy and Lisa Matveyeva as curators.