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6<br />
No.35 JUNE 7, 2018<br />
CULT URE<br />
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA<br />
The lofty and the lowly<br />
The Kyiv History<br />
Museum hosts<br />
Anastasia<br />
Podervianska’s<br />
exhibit<br />
“High-Tech Textile”<br />
By Olesia AVRAMENKO<br />
Photos by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day<br />
The exposition shows textile canvases and overcoats<br />
manually embroidered by the artist and designed<br />
together with Lili Bratus. Also on display are brand-name<br />
wigs. Anastasia Podervianska was born to the family of<br />
well-known artists Les Poderviansky and Svitlana<br />
Lopukhova in 1978. This became quite a challenge for the<br />
talented girl. Apparently, children of famous people always<br />
come across the existential problem of feeling their<br />
uncommonness and difference from parents, the choice of their<br />
own way, and the sad necessity of proving that you are not they.<br />
For a famous name only helps in the beginning and then<br />
becomes an obstacle to overcome.<br />
● COLLAGE AS A CONSCIOUS<br />
GAME WITH OBJECTS<br />
Anastasia turned from a fragile<br />
little girl into a no less fragile but, at<br />
the same time, a strong and beautiful<br />
person who perceives the world openly<br />
and reacts to it assertively and creatively<br />
in various situations. She can<br />
enchant you with feminine attractiveness<br />
and artistry by making photo<br />
compositions in the shape of postcards,<br />
express her opinion in a picturesque<br />
and collage-style way about very<br />
intimate and, at the same time, historic<br />
events in the project “Dream of a<br />
Butterfly Heterocera,” or sink deeply<br />
in the rhythms of a locality and “catch<br />
the inimitable rays of sunlight in combination<br />
with color, and feel the emotions<br />
of discovery again” when traveling<br />
across Ukraine (“Mediterranean<br />
Ukraine”). She can also hit back physically<br />
as a daughter of her father (one<br />
of the first kung fu masters in<br />
Ukraine), winning the European traditional<br />
wushu championship in Tbilisi<br />
last year. What an integrative nature,<br />
isn’t it? Now it is clear what brought<br />
about this demeanor, a discreet grace<br />
of movements and unconstrained postures,<br />
a convincing expression, and determination<br />
to blaze her artistic way.<br />
Collage, as a deliberate game with<br />
objects, elements, and senses, has been<br />
accompanying Podervianska in all her<br />
artistic lifetime. This is a provocative<br />
and insidious type of creation, for it<br />
seems to be very simple – just put together<br />
as many elements as possible.<br />
But, by contrast with a homespun<br />
thing, a piece of art conveys not only<br />
the idea, not only the process, but also<br />
the quality of expression and, what is<br />
more, the result that contains an uncommon<br />
integrative image. Podervianska<br />
creates her own cosmos, combining<br />
nontraditional components unexpectedly<br />
but harmoniously. The<br />
combination of elements that differ in<br />
the time and technique of making is so<br />
natural in Podervianska’s compositions<br />
that you can understand the inscrutable<br />
integrity of existence which<br />
can digest and put together foreign<br />
bodies in a new expression. After all,<br />
we have, as usual, a cocktail, a mixture,<br />
a combination of the most unexpected.<br />
But, for some reason, the expressions<br />
and images the artist begets<br />
impress deeply and open up new meanings<br />
to those who can not only look,<br />
but also see and reflect.<br />
● FIGURATIVE PICTURES<br />
The depth of impression and emotional<br />
richness of a work make themselves<br />
felt gradually, for they are<br />
caused by innermost moments and motions<br />
in the “life” of compositions<br />
filled with overt and covert meanings.<br />
The “Country Horror” project displays<br />
extremely sensitively and acutely<br />
the childish, naive, primary, and,<br />
hence, untarnished world-view and<br />
spiritual reactions of an individual<br />
who is not alienated from earth and nature<br />
bodily, spiritually, or mentally.<br />
This quality clearly shows in Heorhii<br />
Bulashev’s incomparable “Ukrainian<br />
People in their Legends, Religious<br />
Views and Faiths” published in 1909.<br />
Podervianska’s original textile “illustrations”<br />
to this book became a mighty<br />
series of valuable pictures that overgrew<br />
the primary source, subtly complementing,<br />
not defying, it. The artist<br />
applied her own technique of collage.<br />
She thinks in terms of art but uses not<br />
so much paints as colored patches, organized<br />
elements of folk embroidery,