For what?
Diana Machulina takes old-fashioned roots and turns them into 90& ug; turning them into small bows. One form of tradition — centuries of submission — is transformed into another: aggressive defense, up to and including attack.
Machulina, she said, «Growed up with the Soviet slogan „Sword to Eagle“. Could she have known that the phrase itself and the agenda would change to the contrary? The author admits that he actually could: initially, this slogan is a quote from the Bible, and it has not helped people to reconcile for centuries. The memorials were melted into cannons during the French Revolution; Russians were melted into church bells. But in times of hybrid processes, culture as such can also become a weapon. Nothing needs to be melted down; monuments and bells today are the most powerful instrument of influence. For what?
According to the European exhibit curator, Pierre-Cristian Broche, Machulina’s story is about Amazons, women warriors, women’s equality, but the theme of the exhibit is identity. The youth of the artist came at a time when the sex or gender of the human being was irrelevant only to his knowledge and talents. «The Koran was an attribute of village Downshifting, like the woodhouse and the furnace top; later, within the digital detox, and preferably where the mobile network does not catch. Shooting from onions, sitting on a horse without a saddle, riding on a horse, just for romance, to defeat the need to do something practical. But I’m not an Amazon,» Diane Machulina says.
The artist considers the culture of the world and of all ages to be his home, a country unbreakable by the world, and opposes that culture be the object of confrontation. This work refers to the classical ethnography museum, where everything behind the windows is safe. It’s unbelievable to see an «Absorbians,» and it seems to be all about the past — but it turns out that in the twenty-first century mankind continues to be dangerous to itself. «One of the most cynical and my favorite artists of the twentieth century, Damien Hearst, with his work, is a science-based animal placed in formaldehyde by animals we love and/or eat in everyday life,» Machulina says. And deliberately places traditional culture again between window windows: it is used as a resource, but it is denied freedom. However, Diana’s windows are not closed from all sides, which means that culture can break free and become dangerous — as if a sliced horse would live as a zombie and avenge mankind.
Photo of the project: Varvara Toplennikova Work «For what?» (2020) was presented in full format at the exhibition «Identification: subject/process/identity» from 9 November to 14 December at HSE ART GALLY, 2022
