A bit of absurdity and philosophy: Odesa museum shows where the current is going

The exhibition "Where Does the Current Lead?", a visual and philosophical art project about how the legacy of the past and previously formed social scenarios continue to influence our lives, opened today in the evening of March 27 at the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.

As the authors of the works presented at the exhibition told an intentional correspondent, the project was based on an old carpet.

The authors are:

• Anastasia Bas, a conceptual artist from Crimea who creates art objects by combining painting, craft techniques, and war artifacts, transforming them into new semantic forms.
• Lesiapik is a digital artist who addresses the impact of war on society in her work, exploring corporality and inclusion.
• Oleksandra Khudyntseva is a photographer who works with visual anthropology and social photography.

"We tried to raise the question: do external events influence us or do we influence them? The work of each of us is a delving into this question. We are trying to understand, using the objects we use every day, whether they are historical memory, our heritage, or some events that should be left in the past. An attempt to think about who we are washing? Do we have the power to change the future?" explained Anastasia Bas.

According to Oleksandra Khudyntseva, they initially planned an absurd photo shoot on the beach. They took a carpet there and vacuumed it, which became a symbol of the absurdity of some of today's actions.

"We initially conceived this idea as a slightly absurd photo shoot on the beach to photograph a carpet outside the usual space. So we changed the meanings a bit, demonstrating that a carpet is not only a household item, but also a symbol. The photo shows an old carpet and a new vacuum cleaner and a slightly absurd action - vacuuming a carpet on the beach. That's how the project "Where Will the Current Take You?" came about. We wanted to show how the past influences our future through the present," says the photographer.

The project consists of two parts, united by the idea of transforming meanings. Due to the change in context, familiar objects and images lose their established functions and acquire new meanings.

"I said to Sasha: "Sasha, there's a carpet, there's a vacuum cleaner - we need to take pictures." The weather was nice. I thought it would be such an oxymoron, something unusual in terms of taking ordinary things and putting them in a strange environment. That's why we get a kind of dissonance. I wanted to convey to people my own sense of dissonance, that there is a war going on and at the same time an exhibition is taking place, bombs are falling here, you go to a cemetery and then to the theater, and this dissonance is always with me. I wanted to pass it on to people. The main question we had was why do we repeat the same things when the environment has changed? And this vacuum cleaner and carpet are a symbol of the fact that we are doing something familiar, and everything around us has changed, and we are just continuing the same scenarios and asking ourselves if we need them. That is, we do not reject the Soviet heritage, but the question is what to do with it? And I wanted to show that everyone has to answer this question for themselves," said digital artist Lesia (Lesiapik).

The exhibition will last for one month and will be accompanied by a public program: author's tours from the artists, art lectures and open dialogues with the audience.

Кирило Бойко