Ania Lialina
THERE'S PLENTY OF ANYTHING
2021
Knitted napkins are a symbol of home and coziness. This feeling is wanted to have also on the wide streets of your city not only visiting your grandmother, who sets the table and says: “Trere is plenty of everything...”.
Not a library or a restaurant but a public place, open, free, hospitable can become a warm corner in the city center even a fountain
in Novosibirsk.
FOR LUCK
2020
The word «happiness» is gathered from pieces of broken plates found on theruins of a once famous estate in the Vladimir region. The word «happiness» is
gathered from pieces of broken plates found on the ruins of a once famous estate in the Vladimir region.
INNER EMIGRATION
2020
Flags of fictitious states are sewn from sheets and hung in the wind in a field that no one officially owns.
HOUSE ON THE HILL
2020
An existence of undefined/unknowable is frightening. Its qualities and possibilities cannot be predicted. The unknown even at a distance causes fear and apprehension. Probably, the whole surrounding it territory with all the objects, creatures, phenomena that are well known to us, with all of us, seems to be just as unidentified and frightening for the another. The other is looking for shelter to see the danger in advance, to hide in time to keep the fragile security. The other needs a home.
KINDOM OF ANIMALS
objects
The threat of extinction prompts rare species of animals to restore and maintain their shape, to search for new safe and inaccessible territories. So, in a building abandoned by construction crew 10 years ago, where sunlight and rainwater penetrate to and where the wind brings plant seeds to, species found shelter that have lost in their usual habitats.
Kingdom of Animals is a work about the possibility of abiogenesis and meeting with a changed life form, fragile, unstable, but material.
SHORT COURSE
with Maxim Amelchenko
public art
The farther from the side, the more strength rises to the arms and legs. A few breaths remain until the end of the lane. Something glides over the body, clings, tries to hold. The heart skips a beat. The air does not end. Running out of water. Knees and elbows break to the bottom. I see the wall.
On the veranda of an abandoned building, where rainwater collects, an additional wall was built, a springboard was installed and lanes for swimming were organized. The depth of the pool is not more than ten centimeters.
NOTATION
installation
Living in a place is closely related to its change: the introduction of personal items, rearrangement, decoration. The desire of harnessing the external environment often does not correlate with the capabilities of the person or the legal norms in force in a particular territory.
Taking over the use of a signal tape from city services makes it possible to structure the space. The protective properties of the tape make the insertion elements impermeable. The tape forms architectural elements, which become part of the environment.
BODY 2.1
installation
Cognition by observing an alienated body is the artistic task of this project. It finds a material and digital solution. The shell is becoming free of consciousness, and thus a body is seen as a pattern, a fragment of reality. The object, as well as the 3d model (which posted on the most popular site of 3D models TurboSquid), is in an unstable state and able to accept any impact.
The digital code 2.1 mimics the numbering of the software and indicates a beta version. That status is crucial because of the time-based character of the project in the space of the exhibition and in the network. The changes are unsystematic, chthonic. The author does not seek to destroy bodies. On the contrary, it accepts arbitrary interventions, observes a penetration into a private sense of physicality. Reveling in the poetic drift of a pure form and in the extreme flexibility of open source. Satisfying the desire to accept all the variability of the influence of the "others".
F=MG
performance, video
Constant efforts, manifold superior to the result, provoked me to create the work F=mg. The purpose of the performative action was to assemble a pyramid of cubes. The set of cubes in 5 colors and size 10×10 cm is designed for educational games for children from 6 months. In the gallery space I used a forklift that weighs 4 tons for this simple task. During this action I got acute poisoning with exhaust gases (other 2 people got mild poisoning), broke through the wall and collected only 7 cubes, 3 out of 10 were crushed.
F=mg is the formula for finding the force, where F is the force of gravity, m is the body mass, g — the acceleration of gravity.
GREEN STRIPE
public art
Road markings inform citizens about the traffic patterns, attract attention, warn of danger. Erased areas are weak spots in the city. The gap is the vulnerability. In the city, where Olga Rozanova lived and worked, few people are familiar with her work and there are few places of her activity indicated on tourist routes. The most famous painting by Rozanova, Green Stripe, is one of the most important works of the Russian avant-garde. My Green Stripe is an attempt to cure this city.
On the way from Rozanova’s House (Vladimir, Museynaya street, 10) to the venue of the Festival of contemporary arts Art-Subject (Vladimir, Sacco and Vanzetti street, 50) I painted green over all the space of the roadway where the marking, meant for the pedestrians, was erased.
BURIED
installation
There are secrets of the artist buried in flower pots. Every secret was written on paper, cataloged by date, placed on the bottom of a pot in a plastic capsule. Also there are indoor geraniums in flower pots. Pelargonium is a branched bush with a well-developed nodular rhizome, which covers personal secrets. The titles on the markers correspond to the dates of secrets.
UNTITLED
installation
Plaster casts are made from the furniture that composed the environment of one house. Their positioning in space completely corresponds to the real coordinates of the interior design elements in the residential setting.
The size of installation varies.
OLYMPIСS, MOM'S LIPSTICK, DAD'S UNDERWEAR, ONE, TWO, THREE!
objects
The title of the work duplicates the name of a children´s game, the aim of which is to get over the tangled rubber band without touching it. "The Olympics,
mom's lipstick, dad's underwear, one, two, three!"* — is a counting rhyme, during which the two leads while holding the rubber band in their hands, tangle it and freeze in the resulting pose. Objects are made of rebar and repeat the possible variations of game figures that the player or players need to overcome.
Objects are made of rebars and imitate possible shapes of the game figures.
Olympics
To play one needs a rubber band with a length of about five meters. More than three people should be playing. It is best to play on the street. The game is suitable for children from six years.
Game rules:
1. The first player takes a rubber band with two hands, without squeezing it. The second player takes the band with one hand on the other end, and the other takes the band between the hands of the first player and moves a few steps away. So two players stand opposite each other at a distance of one and a half to two meters
with a tight rubber band, crossed over as an "eight" or a "bow".
2. Players say: "The Olympics, mom's lipstick, dad's underwear, one, two, three!"*.
3. At the words "one, two, three!" players, without releasing the rubber from their hands, tangle it and freeze in the resulting pose. You are allowed to put your feet on the rubber band, you are allowed to raise one arm and lower another — the main thing is to get the more sophisticated "spider web".
4. The goal of other players is to climb (jump, crawl) over the "spider web" without touching the band.
5. The one who touches the band, is a loser and takes the place of the one holding the rubber band. You can play in two-person teams. In this case, one pair holds the rubber band, two players of the other team try to climb over it, if someone from the team touched the band, the team is a loser, and swtches places with the team that holds the rubber band.
* Versions of the rhymes:
Mickey Mouse loves sausage – stop!
Mickey, Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, Donald Duck, do like this!
Olympics, eat three poisons and choke!
The objects are made of reinforcement and completely repeat possible options of contours of the rubber, which must be overcome.
LEAP YEAR
object
Creation as a method of survival and living day by day.
It's 366 days, during neither one of which I was able to change the course of things.
On the table with a white tablecloth 366 dumplings are placed.
366 times one needs to admit their weakness to create.
On the round table with a white tablecloth stands a pyramid of gypsum dumplings. At the opening the visitors were offered dumplings, inside of which was dough instead of stuffing. The work is in Switzerland in a private collectio.
DIALOGUES
installation
Time-based object on the impossibility of clear communication. The conversation about the inequation of the spoken and the understood, exactly as the signifier and the signified, on the loss of information, about the insurmountable difference of the positions of an addressee and an addresser. The core of the installation — is a fence made of boards, which on one side contains the author´s record, stylistically similar to the fragments of Plato's Dialogues, on the other — only markers and potency to the dialogue.
The utterance of the relevance asserts its existence. To be understood means to exist.
BORN TO BURN UP
installation
Burning matches one by one where a single movement provokes an arson and tilting at a distance – is one of the meaningless time-spending practices. In this work I am interested in the form of procrastination caused by the conflict of ambition and fear of failure, desire for action and apathy. The inscription on each match reveals the intention of a useful activity, but burning one of them is not accompanied by the process of ignition.
The burning of matches as a kind of purposeless leisure has ceased to exist, along with the matches that went out of use. So, in Born to burn up subject, object and medium, the signified and the signifier converge at one point.
Born to burn up is an installation of matches burned of varying degrees, each of which have the inscription "Я буду зажигать" ("I will light up"). The mass of matches occupies the space allotted to them, they completely cover the floor.
BODY
time-based object, text
The body is a work about the transience of touching, both physical and mental. This time-based object represents the female body. Its contours are smoothed and unified, but contain the characteristic facial features and shapes, in which author is easily recognizable. Thus, the author cancels the opposition of the "General — particular" and goes on to the opposition of "public — private". Each visitor may touch the body, removing the surface coating of the pigment, changing the structure and appearance.
Part of the work is also the text on the form, its choice and significance.
RADIO OF SILENCE
sound installation
"Radio of silence" is a growing library of double-channel audio tracks that reproduce the background sound.
60-minute recordings represent the response of the empty spaces to the presence occurring in them.
The Genius loci of the state archive, radio studio, sewing workshop, cemeteries, greenhouse, dance hall, library, museum, house, cinema, town square, monastery.
WHOLE LIFE BEFORE MY EYES
installation
If I trip and fall down these stairs, my fall will last 1-2 seconds. I have a dolichocranic configuration of the skull, this means that there will be no injuries in the cervical spine, only the bones of the cranial vault will be damaged. With the fracture in the confluence of sinuses, I will have time to see my whole life before my eyes, captured by a camera of my iPhone. The fall of the device from the same height onto a hard surface will lead to the damaged case. My iPhone has 7 layers in the motherboard. Damaged inner layers will make any further operation impossible.
SEDOVA
installation
Sedova — is a utopia-project. I was born on this street and spent my childhood there. This geographical area that has the exact coordinates, moved into the category of space fantasy, its existence in time and space stopped, was preserved. At that time it seemed to me that all dreams can be realized and all the inhabitants of this street loved me and strawberry ice cream. Keeping this view about the space where everything is in harmony, I collect all the buildings on all the Sedova streets in different cities as the utopian city of my childhood, where people understand each other without words and eat the same ice cream.
Plan, layout, interactive map of the city contain copies of all the Sedova streets in our country and abroad, recorded by Google maps and Yandex maps. Little paper houses are striving to the draft of the city in order to take their place in this project, but the city remains a fantasy non-place.
I'M DANCING AND LOOKING INSIDE MYSELF, AND I SEE, HOW I'M DANCING AND LOOKING INSIDE MYSELF, AND I SEE...
double-channel video
Two screens are facing each other: on the first one — an outline of the dancer, on the second – a close-up of their face. So, the viewer gets into the position of choice, either to observe the actual action or the reflected one, the whole or the part. Thus, the artist, based on the thesis that a dance is a discovery of yourself, turns inside out the look of a dancer to the inside, interpreting the situation as "I'm dancing, and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see, how I´m dancing and looking inside myself, and I see...
THE IDENTITY OF THE VISIBLE. Anya Lyalina. Masha Molokova
2016
installation
We put the photos of our apartments in small utility stereo boxes. Inside they live their life, without merging into one image when you look at them, but creating a new everyday and typical picture.
Random details of this project become the primary elements of the public. We were united in this project into the mechanism, where the object of shooting is determined by the everyday environment of everyone, and the photos are selected due to the similarity of the objects and their shooting to produce a "binary" view of the collective living space of the house. The fragmentation and displacement of the focal length used by us forces the viewer to recognize and "to finish", construct the images. Thus the viewer is involved, he/she complements the proposed reality and extends the collective household space.
DO YOU FEEL HOW THE HEAT IS LEAVING MY FACE?
2016
video, time-based object
Rituals are designed to separate the stay in the spheres of the profane and the sacred. The transition from one state to another is impossible without the cult and magic phrase structures or objects. One of the most effective tools of this transition was a mask. Covering one's face under it signifies a symbolic death. Going through the ritual, the representative of the traditional community temporarily "dies" for the outside world and "resurrects" in a new role, often with a new name and entity.
The phenomenon of the mask is multifaceted, but its fundamental principle — a symbol of a stay in the region of death, to which Roland Barthes referred the photograph. Following the impossibility of the reviewer, spectrum, imprinted and immutable, one goes beyond their limits, the photo as the death mask, constitutes the death of the image object. I am going through a transitional ritual of a symbolic death and resurrection. Gypsum allows me to access thermoperception and to provide a tangible time-based object.
"Do you feel how the heat is leaving my face?" represents a full cycle of the mask creation from manufacturing of the cast on the video representation to cooling the gypsum here and now. This allows me to involve the viewer in the process as a witness, an observer.
Do you feel how the heat is leaving my face?
@ Anya Lyalina, 2018
Email: a.o.lyalina@gmail.com Tel.: +7 (964) 527 69 30