LOST COLOURS

since 2019

A series based on work with family archives.

Paintings and installations with oil on cardboard, styrofoam and glass. Investigation of ancestry, recurring patterns and generational traumas via archival research, highlighting events, environments and characters.

CHILDREN OF WAR

An installation.
Oil on glass, shadows projected on the wall by light.
66x112cm
2021

Filmed by DeadManDraws
Edited by Mary Lileonova

“The idea of archiving and documenting ancestry through one’s own experiences, but via one’s memories and vision, ironically becomes a snake biting its tail. Research and investigation of my central asian and eastern-european bloodlines, made me come across recurring generational patterns, including mirrored events, behaviour and actions inflicted by cultural particularities, that have passed onto the present, both personal, as well as national and global.

In the process of introspecting into personal trauma, connecting nets, receiving knowledge and stumbling upon deja-vu and remembrance, one might highlight discoveries touching common experiences and face perspectives as whole rather than just in borders of one’s identity.

Understanding the language of memories and their transcription into the materialisation of that vision creates a narrative of the process of a forming individual and those experiences, which had built it.

The series ‘Lost colours’ started from paintings based on black and white photographs from my family archive, as exploration of different environments, characters and landscapes. First installation made in this series narrates a post-war scene of my grandmother with the children she led through war and taught, which is painted from a school photograph of the class. Each and every one of their faces looks drained and exhausted; their eyes are empty, almost lifeless, deprived of natural child’s light and purity. The game of light and shadows, use of space and material reveals the initial intention behind the piece. It’s painted on glass to eventually create a projection from the lights in front of it onto the wall behind, that way making a double painting from the shadows of the original one painted in oils. To fully experience the installation, audience is given 6 view points.

A very important process in creating the artwork for me is the search for material. After I started to experiment on different textures of materials I’d find on the street, I have lost interest of only buying brand new canvases, not only because of the idea of re-using not needed metals, glass, styrofoam etc. but a chosen material has an enormous influence on the final outcome of the painting. Each reused material has its own story and marks; it alters the process of creating and I use its properties to parallel the narrative and support it.

This piece was made 3 months before the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukrainian borders, but at the time Ukraine has already been partially occupied and has been fighting against occupants for 8 years, while the world didn’t know. I felt the need to shout for help before the bigger catastrophe could happen, of bringing awareness, of making people understand the consequences, learning from the past. This intention was to show the life of generations we raise in war and that this was not just documentation of history to look and appreciate the time we live in with the safety we acquire, but a reminder that children like that are facing the same fate every day. Every day lights in their eyes are being taken away from them. It’s happening in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan and many others.”