KEY WORKS
Tanya Akhmetgalieva — Video art works Showreel (2015 - 2020)
Sound: Victor Mazin
2020, series of works
Painting, graphics, video
Created with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Exhibitions:
Temporary Home — solo show. KOPIKUZ, Kemerovo, Russia, 2021
I Can Disappear — solo show. Ekaterina Foundation, Moscow, 2020
The series of works is united by recurring themes that repeatedly appear in Akhmetgalieva’s creative output, such as illusions, multiple layers of reality, double images, and flickering meanings. Unstable reality falls apart into multiple layers. Appearing to be made from fragments of shattered dreams, an enchanted chamber of secrets promptly morphs into a frenetic Luna Park, where fantasy and phobias mix into a dizzying neo-surreal cocktail.
2020, Series of works
Painting, graphics, video
Fragments for the work have been collected over the past three years in Russia and Switzerland.
Audio-visual work A Radiant Cloud was created in collaboration with Dima Anikin Resequence (music).
Created with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Exhibition:
Heart Surgery — solo show. Haus der Kunst St. Josef, Solothurn, Switzerland, 2020
A series of drawings and videos Heart Surgery was created specifically for the exhibition at Haus Der Kunst Sankt Josef. This story is about illusions, ephemerality and a sense of infinite uncertainty. One day, our whole life turns into a ghostly rave party. The movement in a circle, bright colors and flashes of light make us forget and again believe in the impossible things.
2019, Series of works
Painting, graphics, video
Exhibition:
The Poisonous Berries — solo show. Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, 2019
The Poisonous Berries marks the painting debut of Tanya Akhmetgalieva, an artist chiefly known for her textile art. Her new oil paintings and graphic works are characterized by the same painterly lyricism, vibrant hues and sketch-like spontaneity familiar from her weavings. For Akhmetgalieva, painting is a form of journaling and channeling her stream of consciousness. The artist describes her work as a ghostly web of illusions, metamorphoses and suddenly closing apertures. Her works teem with glimpses of dreams, unexpected peals of behind-the-scenes laughter, letters addressed to nobody, incredible coincidences, and sudden bursts of light, all spinning in a blurry merry-go-round. Her bright, exuberant colors deceptively coax us to enter a fictitious paradise, which abruptly reveals itself to be an abode of terror, pain and monstrous rage.
2016, Video installation. 6’00’’
Video: Tanya Akhmetgalieva
Sound: Viktor Mazin
Video made within the residence at the International Center of Arts Cité des Arts (Paris) with the support of Institut Fançais de Russie (St. Petersburg)
Exhibitions:
Videozavod – solo show, Lotsremark, Basel, Switzerland, 2020
Mechanical Ballet – group show.The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2019
Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall – group show. Ncca, Moscow, 2018
In Akhmetgalieva’s video work A Day Full of Hope, the monotonous whirling of the carousel is rhythmically divided into montage phrases that create an immersive effect. Although the carousel is characterized by centrifugal movement (who wouldn’t want to fly away on a wooden horse or a tin rocket outside the circle), the artist twists this logic. Introverted, and aimed at inner experiences, the video draws the viewer into its currents and makes him a participant in the “mechanical ballet”.
2017, Video installation
Video & Sound: Tanya Akhmetgalieva
Video made within the residence at the International Center of Arts Cité des Arts (Paris) with the support of Institut Français de Russie (St. Petersburg)
Exhibition:
Man as Bird. Images of Journeys – group show. Palazzo Soranzo, Parallel program of 57th La Biennale Di Venezia.
Site-specific installation works with the memory of the place: for many centuries, ships moored to Venice’s piers. Tanya Akhmetgalieva reflects upon personal life odyssey of each of us and creates a story about how we always dream to be somewhere else except where we are now. Our beacons beautifully glow somewhere far at the horizon, and we eternally drift from one dream to another, failing to live here and now. The installation draws the viewer into a crazy endless swirl of thoughts and feelings. Surreal synthetic light produces waves, splashes and noises interfering with the images: the beautiful surface of the unknown hides dangerous reefs.
2016, Video installation, 6’00’’
Video: Tanya Akhmetgalieva
Sound: Viktor Mazin
Text: Victor Mazin & Tanya Akhmetgalieva
Exhibition:
House of Impressions – group show. Golitsin manor, The Pushkin State Museum, Moscow, 2016
Princess Nocturne’ is a video installation in memory of Princess Avdotya Golitsina, who once lived in this Manor. After hearing a fortune teller’s prediction that she would die in her sleep, the princess refused to sleep at night, and for this, she was nicknamed the Princess Nocturne. Wishing to avoid her fate, rather than sleeping, she spent the night doing household chores, receiving guests, arranging literary salons, and engaging in heated discussions.
This video installation was created specifically for this old ceiling, upon which Princess Nocturne might have gazed throughout her sleepless nights. The geometric lines of the ceiling echo the geometry of the fragments of the garden projected upon it — the projected garden scene is a view visible from the balcony of the room.
2016, Series of video installations
Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award 2016 – Special prize of Institut Fançais de Russie (St. Petersburg)
Exhibitions:
Fragile Island — solo show, part of Fathers & Sons Project, Central Exhibition Hall Manege, Moscow, 2016
Tanya Akhmetgalieva narrates: “When I was still a child, I imagined an island as a small piece of land, akin to a bump, surrounded by endless water. It might be absolutely empty, or one or two palm trees might be standing on the island. There was only enough space for one person. I feel as if I am still living on that island to this very day…”
All the works displayed at the exhibition are linked by glittering colors, images, and words, which spill over and overflow, similar to holographic paper. In each work, there is a conflict between what is plastic and what is alive, the real and the imaginary. This is a project about the eternal search for happiness, harmony, and disturbance, about memory and forgetfulness, hope and loss, and about the «we» in each of us.
2014, Series of works
Sewing, threads, video, graphic works
Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award 2014 – winner, Best Visual Art Project
Exhibitions:
Allergy To Dust – solo show, Marina Gisich gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014
Other capital – group exhibition, Museum of Moscow, 2014
Contemporary Drawing — group exhibition The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014
In this series, Tatyana Akhmetgalieva presents new video works and textile motifs in her recognizable embroidery technique. Left alone in the gallery space, the viewer becomes immersed in thought about the present day and tries to temporarily turn off the endless flow of information crashing into his life, but is this possible? The irregular power supply, the intermittent flickering light, the hanging wires of thread, and the “red hot” telephones intrude on his personal space again and again.
What are we waiting for and expecting? Sounds and signals reach their targets, often distorting reality, and it becomes nearly impossible to recognize the true meaning of received information in the age of information wars.
2011 – 2013, Series of works
Textiles, sewing, threads
Exhibitions:
There and Back Again – group show, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, 2018
Hello World! — solo show, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland, 2014
Hello World! — solo show, Gallery Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea, Milan, Italy, 2013
Synthetic Syndrome — Solo show, Tkachi, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2012
Practice For Everyday Life – group show, Calvert 22 Foundation, London, 2011
Hello World! – project is devoted to the almost total immersion of modern human beings in virtual worlds, their constant escape from reality in all possible ways, and life among the same people -shells, which in real life -are like their online avatars that even before eating take photos of food and send to the discussion in social networks, and also record every step, any purchase, favorite animals, work, leisure, friends, where they are and so on… Not a minute ‘offline’!
So many people can easily feel famous and popular, you can be anything and play any role. Feelings and desires are measured by the number of ”likes”. Names are converted into funny nicknames. Blurred the line between public and private space. The whole world is entangled by networks and many people feel almost physical involvement in life beyond the screen.
2011, Series of works
Textiles, sewing, threads, video
Exhibitions:
Crystallizations — group show. Contemporary Art From Saint Petersburg. Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, Turku, Finland, 2014
Incubator — solo show, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, 2011
The Heroes Of Our Time — group show. Qui Vive? 2nd Moscow International Biennale For Young Art, Open Gallery, Moscow, 2010
This project reflects our reality, the new century, a new stage into which we entered. The focus of the incubator is a couveuse newborn. But it’s not just a kid, it’s a metaphor, reminding us “Time of Troubles” in which we live, about our world, which moves to a new stage of history and makes an emergency landing, a massive epidemic, war, crushing the revolution and other domestic threats, and critical processes.
Premature baby – a state of mankind as a whole at the moment. The situation is very complicated and problematic. The weak and helpless body of our common future hatched and nursed in intensive care. And despite all sorts of technological innovations, invented by man, and seemingly limitless innovation, “medicine” for all diseases and the most advanced treatment techniques cannot guarantee recovery and further a better life, promise of universal happiness, and out of the situation.
2010, Installation
Textiles, sewing, threads, ball of threads
Exhibitions:
Great Void — group show, RuArts Foundation, Moscow, 2022
The First Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art — group show. Ekaterinburg, Russia, 2010
The idea of Clotho was born out of the antique myth of Moirae, the Greek goddesses. The first of them, in the guise of a spinner, embodied the unswerving and dispassionate course of fate; the second Moira represented its vicissitudes, and the third impersonated its ineluctability.
The name of the spinner was Clotho; she used her yarn to thread present-day events and each mortal’s destiny determined at the moment of his or her birth. Clotho is also the name of a recently discovered human gene responsible for keeping one young and beautiful. The close-up views of female faces, sketchy and completely see-through, are the images of the Worsted Factory’s actual workers who have devoted their entire lives to this work and, as it were, turned into these very goddesses.
2009, Installation
Textiles, sewing, threads, ball of threads
Kandinsky Prize 2010, category «Young Artist» – short list, Moscow
Exhibitions:
Generation Start — group show. Parallel Program of Manifesta 10, First Military School, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 2014
Crystallizations — group show. Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, Turku, Finland, 2014
Kandinsky Prize — group show. Central House of Artists, Moscow, 2010
The Chrysalis Phase — solo show, Center for Contemporary Art Winzavod, 3 Moscow Biennale Of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2009
Siberia with its acute motherhood and aggressively luxurious culture is considered as a part of Edam, where a person can feel the truth of his existence. A Siberian dweller, a descendant of local ethnicity, enforced settlers and prisoners, who has been living for a long time in frontier stage conditions, at neutral territory, is a kind of a draft who is to finish its formation only in future. And the very Siberia takes allegoric features of a giant mythical cocoon, which is hiding in its chrysalis phase behind the layers of its threads sources of new axis time», which suggests an unprecedented leap to the future.