Alexandra Mitlyanskaya: Memory Box

After the market, Saturday 17 February 2024, 12:30 pm

Slow down: sometimes you get more by doing less. It’s good to be reminded of that sometimes. (Brian Eno)

We are showing a video that is so unobtrusive that you can ignore it. But when you watch it, you realize that it’s not a hackneyed piece. It’s uncomplicated, but not mindless.

An old lady takes jewellery out of a jewel box. One by one, rings, necklaces, pearls, brooches, bracelets and watches are revealed. She touches and examines each piece, tries to put some of the items on. This tactile and visual examination can evoke in her memory events and feelings associated with each piece. In some cases it does, in others perhaps no longer.

Mitlyanskaya’s video loops are images of her own consciousness, which circle endlessly in her head or transform into barely animated static states. They are like memories or mirages of the future.

Alexandra Mitlyanskaya was a visiting artist at Tufts University, Boston, Harvard University, Cambridge and the Parsons School of Design in New York. In 2011, she was the winner of the “Now&After” video festival. In 2017 she was nominated for the Kandinsky Prize. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of the Hermitage Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the National Centre for Contemporary Art, the National Centre for Photography ROSPHOTO, St. Petersburg, as well as in the collections of the Otten Kunstraum, Provinzial Nord and the Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2019, Alexandra Mityanskaya was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship. She lives in Moscow.

Admission free