I was lucky to be invited to participate in the closing night of the show “The strange impression of looking at things for the first time” at the Mile End Art Pavilion. I will be showing a participatory social sculpture that will mark the last piece of  Tea Connections project.

Anna is a ceramic artist who researches tea traditions, and notions around food and communication. At our performance event she will make a participatory experiment that will conclude her Tea Connections project.

This piece come from the tradition of Russian endless tea party, where one could be drinking up to 10 cups of tea in a row, and this process would be the ground for communication. She will use cups that she made to create the new experience of connectedness in tea consumption by linking vessels, and tea-drinkers with elastic threads. Balancing between ideas of physical and mental connection, that are both parts of social tea,  she prompts the participants to move away or be very close through the various length of the threads the length of which are taken from her body measurements.

 
Earlier she presented this project in a site specific show but Art Pavilion event will be a place to extend the ideas and involve viewer in the production of social sculpture that makes one to experience the networks and a pleasure, or discomfort, of collective.

Forest

More written stuff to come about all the pieces in few days

A Shy One

Not speaking out

Pussy Riot

I still need to illustrate the book I am making for the show. It does exist in a state of a sketchbook full of words. I will put all those words together in simple  poems now.

After I graduate I will be working with this new exciting shape! No time for being bored or having a post-degree depression.

Now it is all ready to come together.

When a glass or a peace of crockery gets broken – it is for the happiness, we say in Russia.

Unfortunately, not so well made mould means not that perfect cast. It wasn’t an easy task to make a silicone cup. The best option for a mould was a plaster mould. I made this cup as a prop for a film that is a part of my project.

This video is about despair and helplessness. It is about a terminal situation, in a way. An illness or a global catastrophe. When you feel that you cannot not do anything but whatever you do won’t help, because the events are much greater than you efforts. You try to break this situation and you can never do it.

A film still.

I was hoping for some time devoted to experiment with lustre. I realised that there is not enough gold in my pieces about Russia. Gold is important!

“Speech is silver, Silence is golden”

I have been experimenting with adding different materials to ceramics for a while. Not only textiles and hair this time, but metal, plastics, rubbers as well.