Aidan Salakhova, one of Russia’s preeminent avant-garde artists, exhibits at Moscow’s Museum of Modern Art. Her art deals primarily with women’s rights, and freedom, and touches on religion and history in a way that manages to challenge and provoke. Her exhibition, which features some 50 works is titled “Fascinans et Tremendum” – fascinating and fearsome; it is divided into three parts: the body, the hands and the ornament.
In one hall, we see “the body” – or rather, three sculptures of female bodies in full Yashmak, or hijab, – covered head-to-toe – carved in granite and Carrara marble, standing solemnly; the sculptures speak directly to women’s freedom in today’s multiethnic Russia… and, according to the artist’s provocative take, in the whole of today’s world. The artist paradoxically plays with the fact that while the full cover obviously restricts women – she provocatively claims that it affords women a kind of total freedom. In “the hands” hall, we see sculptures of … well, hands … and also drawings, sketches and reliefs of hands – as well as several video performances featuring the artist’s own hands. Hands remain, for Salakhova, the most expressive parts of women’s bodies when cloaked, after their face. In her last works, mostly black and white and gold geometric works, the artist looks at ornamentation – born of old tradition and simultaneously very much “in.” We see “objects” … ornaments, textiles and reliefs, mostly of clothing … objects sometimes carved in white marble, which cast beautiful shadows.
The artist, whose work was covered-up at the last Venice Biennale, by the sponsoring country itself (the word “censored” was diplomatically avoided then) controversially addresses with both western and eastern themes of women, the individual, and freedom, in her work.
By Genya Krikova
Art is Life Moscow Correspondent
We post several photos from the show, by Genya Krikova and a video-interview with the artist by ArtInfo’s Vanessa Yurkevich.
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Read more on Aidan Salakhova on wikipedia, linked here.
We link to the Moscow Museum of Modern Art website, for more info on the exhibition, here.
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