The Artist is Asleep is a programmatic work by the artists. The text-manifesto was written in 1995 and the installation was presented for the first time in 1996 at the Soros Center's exhibition in Almaty. Later, The Artist is Asleep was exhibited at the Tengri-Umai Gallery in Almaty in 2008 and at the Central AsianPavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2015, the installation was shown at the Vorobyevs' eponymous exhibition at the A. Kasteev Museum of Arts in Almaty, organized by Aspan Gallery. In 2017, the work was selected for the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale VIVA ARTE VIVA. In 2020 the installation was acquired by the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The Artist is Asleep is a metaphor for the mystery of creation and, a narrative describing the life of the recent era, as well as the artists' self-irony.

"The artist is asleep
To wake him, to shake him,
To urge to conform to his time
Is an utterly useless endeavour.
But the one who is always wide awake,
Always is “all ears”, knows “which way the wind blows”
And has his craft at the ready,
Does not suit many for some reason.
All one can do is to wait for the sleeping boulder to stir,
Rub open his eyes and get up as if to relieve himself.
Well then don’t let the moment slip.
His efforts may result in a masterpiece."

Yelena Vorobyeva, 1995

The Artist is Asleep is a programmatic work by the artists. The text-manifesto was written in 1995 and the installation was presented for the first time in 1996 at the Soros Center's exhibition in Almaty. Later, The Artist is Asleep was exhibited at the Tengri-Umai Gallery in Almaty in 2008 and at the Central AsianPavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2015, the installation was shown at the Vorobyevs' eponymous exhibition at the A. Kasteev Museum of Arts in Almaty, organized by Aspan Gallery. In 2017, the work was selected for the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale VIVA ARTE VIVA. In 2020 the installation was acquired by the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The Artist is Asleep is a metaphor for the mystery of creation and, a narrative describing the life of the recent era, as well as the artists' self-irony.

"The artist is asleep
To wake him, to shake him,
To urge to conform to his time
Is an utterly useless endeavour.
But the one who is always wide awake,
Always is “all ears”, knows “which way the wind blows”
And has his craft at the ready,
Does not suit many for some reason.
All one can do is to wait for the sleeping boulder to stir,
Rub open his eyes and get up as if to relieve himself.
Well then don’t let the moment slip.
His efforts may result in a masterpiece."

Yelena Vorobyeva, 1995

The Artist is Asleep is a programmatic work by the artists. The text-manifesto was written in 1995 and the installation was presented for the first time in 1996 at the Soros Center's exhibition in Almaty. Later, The Artist is Asleep was exhibited at the Tengri-Umai Gallery in Almaty in 2008 and at the Central AsianPavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2015, the installation was shown at the Vorobyevs' eponymous exhibition at the A. Kasteev Museum of Arts in Almaty, organized by Aspan Gallery. In 2017, the work was selected for the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale VIVA ARTE VIVA. In 2020 the installation was acquired by the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The Artist is Asleep is a metaphor for the mystery of creation and, a narrative describing the life of the recent era, as well as the artists' self-irony.

"The artist is asleep
To wake him, to shake him,
To urge to conform to his time
Is an utterly useless endeavour.
But the one who is always wide awake,
Always is “all ears”, knows “which way the wind blows”
And has his craft at the ready,
Does not suit many for some reason.
All one can do is to wait for the sleeping boulder to stir,
Rub open his eyes and get up as if to relieve himself.
Well then don’t let the moment slip.
His efforts may result in a masterpiece."

Yelena Vorobyeva, 1995

The True Story of an Installation

In actuality Light in the End... was created not in 1998, as will be indicated in the catalogue of the Biennale 1. Everything started much earlier.

In the cold autumn of 1995, after doing some painting, I lay on a hard trestle-bed in the studio of the "Alatau" state farm and gazed at the empty ceiling. A bare light bulb swung from the ceiling: its whole appearance cried out for a shade, and it did not wish to wait. To avoid complications, it was urgent to satisfy its whims. There was nothing at hand, except for some rusty teakettles in different colours, which we had picked up while investigating the channel of Bol'shaia Almaatinka River. There were mane stones-boulders there - future "Petrifications" 2. (We used to collect them, dragging this load on the two-wheel cart while astonished passerby looked on. Along the way we picked up nice-looking teakettles, which for some reason we would come upon. We would wash them clean and gather them into a "collection".) It was one of these that we measured to see if it would fit that shining lady, and were pleased with the amusing combination.

Light in the End - somehow the name appeared immediately, as soon as a narrow stream of light came from the end of the teakettle's spout. Then we forgot about it.

In the meantime winter was passing. Came February of 1996, no less cold and freezing. Lack of money, mountains of uncleared snow in the streets, periodic brownouts, while on television - constantly the war in Cechnya, and Yeltsin idiotically discussing the 38 snipers who "see everything, know everything, and have everything under control'. My mood was awful - Lida Blinova 3 was very ill! Cancer - everything was proceeding to an unhappy outcome. All in all, complete darkness.

Then Yuferova 4 convinced me to exhibit in the Parade of Galleries 5 as a representative of Voyager Gallery. After discussing things, we concluded that the exhibition will be devoted to war, slaughter, and hunting. Violence and blood.

It was decided to exhibit art in all forms that were available - printing, graphic art, installations, as well as works by primitive artist that through their content and appearance created an appropriate mood. (Unfortunately, an enormous horrifying painting that gave us the whole idea for the exposition was not shown. Tiger Hunt, by some artist-electrician, on which ferocious hunters on horseback attempted to shoot and kill equally ferocious tigers with bared teeth. Yuferova got cold feet about the reaction from the museum ladies.)

The title of the exhibition was unwittingly provided by Yeltsin - 38 SNIPERS.

I proposed to dilute the expected horror with something more amusing - and recalled the experiment with the teakettle as a lamp shade.

"Display 'this' at Filatov's 6 place," - Irina Petrovna snapped at me.

Well, that's a thought, we will take that to Tengri-Umai Gallery, we will test people's reactions. It should be noted that the word "installation" was just entering the vocabulary of our art personalities, and there was almost no one in our community able to create them.

After talking things over with Viktor 7, we decided to create works simultaneously for both Parade and the "catalogue" exhibition at Tengri-Umai 8.

As always, there was to little time, we were almost out of money, and our nerves were on the brink from the work to be done and from everything taking place around us. (A few days earlier my brother Pavel phoned me from St. Petersburg, said that he was immediately leaving the city, basically running away from some kind of persecution by criminals. And here, a few days earlier, Aunt Anya, my mother's sister, went into the hospital for an urgent operation. There was a healthy person - and here now... All the relatives are stunned.)

The entire staff of Voyager, bewildered by the exhibition, is busy searching for rifles, guns, bullets and cartridges for our Amusement 9, while I had much earlier spotted the stuffed goat in their large hall.

Two days from now Parade opens, while tomorrow opens theTengri-Umai exhibitions. The entire "elite" will be there, and we haven't done anything yet. We aren't keeping up with the schedule. A total madhouse.

Since the morning I am busy writing a text about the "preventive thinning out of landscape painters by portrait painters" for Bullet-Fool No. 1 10. Viktor is busy sawing out and painting tablemats for teakettles (we are exhibiting three, each in a different colour). We still must buy few meters of electrical wire and other accessories for this work.

A phone call from my cousin Zina, Aunt Anya's daughter - her mother has died. I sit and write. The doorbell rings. It's Pavel, just in from the train station. I tell him the news. My mother calls, asks Pavel to come immediately and take the body away from the hospital mortuary. I sit and write.

A phone call from Voyager. They let me know that the wife of the Israeli consul is interested in my picture, has asked about the price. "Sell it for any price you consider appropriate, it's come just in time". Some good news at last.

We take the pictures, everything that might be needed, go to put it all together. The exhibition somehow cam together at once - the place, the layout. Filatov, always business-like in appearance, wandered around the hall with his beloved mobile phone, conducted negotiations and simultaneously gave us practical advice on connecting the electrical wire, all without expressing an opinion about our piece. However Yelizaveta Malinovskaya 11 said at once: "'This' is not for me, I do not accept 'it'".

We sign at the bottom - "IF YOU WISH TO SEE THE LIGHT - LOOK INTO THE SPOUT OF THE TEAKETTLE".

Finished. It runs. The light is on.

Outside it's already evening. It's cold.

We get on bus No. 32, we must go to Orbita 12, to "Aunt Anya". The bus weaves along the streets, but it has become so frozen, that the windows are completely covered with ice and we can't see where we are going. The passengers sit without moving, they try to keep the heat within themselves. We do so as well. Finally, after doing rough count of the stops thus far, we take a guess, and find ourselves in infernal darkness.

Along the sides stand multistory buildings with dark windows, only the snow shimmers with bluish color and the frost crackles. I have completely lost my bearings. Vorobyev says that we must reverse direction.

We cut across the housing development, plunge waist-deep into the snow banks as we wander, until, finally, reach the familiar house.

The apartment is dark, the coffin is in the middle of the room, a woman lays there. Her face slightly reflects the orange light of a candle. We hear sounds in the kitchen - people cutting up some foodstuffs, there is quiet conversation. People are sitting around the coffin. We sat down as well. Our feet are wet. What's taking place seems so unreal that I feel like a character in some film. Naturally, I am sad about Aunt Anya, but I don't recognize her in the one who is in the coffin. Later I was told that they saw above her a little stream of light that dissolved in the darkness. I believed it.

Next day - the funeral. In the evening - the exhibition, the presentation of the catalogues. People come up, obediently look into the spout - everyone needs light. After the exhibition I was a bit disappointed by Bayan Karibayevna's 13 reaction - "Go shove them (the light bulbs) up the ass", I understand her, she cares about art.

Things are also going on at the exhibition in the museum. A struggle is taking place. Fearing for the lives of the elderly women attendants, the staff were barely able to take away the rifle that the drunken Osipov 14 pulled out of Amusement. To make everything realistic, he wanted to shoot out 38 holes in a poster featuring a target that he had drawn for the exhibition. After the lives of the old women were no longer threatened, Sergey Maslov 15 made an appearance, carrying a funeral wreath that he had bought at a cemetary.

He placed this object under his picture Execution by Firing Squad. Along the bright pink wove a black ribbon with an inscription in bronze: "TO INNOCENT VICTIMS FROM MASLOV". (After the exhibition closed Sergey placed the wreath in the lobby of the Artist's Union building. Initially people avoided it, thinking that someone had died, and later it vanished, apparently utilised for the purpose intended.)

Gallery Day 16. In the evening everyone at our place. At least thirty people, we run out of chairs. In the kitchen Kanat Ibragimov 17 and Yerbol Meldibekov are eating borsch. The rest are offered chocolates and liquor.

Late at night, using tables as a platform for shows, Yuferova parades her second-hand dress in front of Kamilla Li 18.

Kamilla commissions a painting, Yuferova's Apotheosis, from Sergey Maslov.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 1999

1 Catalogue of the 1999 Istanbul Biennale.

2 The series of sculptures-objects Petrifications (1995-2009).

3 Lida Blinova - an artist, wife of the artist Rustam Khalfin. Rustam and Lida, followers of the avantgarde artist Vladimir Sterligov, were the face of unofficial art in Alma-Ata during the 1980-1990s.

4 Irina Petrovna Yuferova - director of Voyager Gallery. During the 1990's, an active organiser of and participant in the artistic life.

5 Parade of Galleries - a series of annual exhibitions that took place during the period 1995-1999 at the A. Kasteev Museum of Arts.

6 Vladimir Filatov - director and organiser of the first gallery in Alma-Ata, Tengri-Umai.

7 Viktor Vorobyev.

8 Exhibition and presentation of ten catalogues of Kazakhstani artists, published in 1995 by Soros Foundation.

9 The installation Amusement, in which we used two rifles, a stuffed goat, and hand embroidery.

10 The installation Bullet-Fool No. 1 and Bullet-Fool No. 2.

11 Yelizaveta Malinovskaya, a specialist on art, at that time worked at the Tengri-Umai Gallery.

12 Orbita - a housing development in Alma-Ata.

13 Bayan Karibayevna Barmankulova - a specialist on art, critic, curator.

14 Alexander Osipov - artist, participant in the 38 Snipers exhibition.

15 Sergey Maslov - an artist, a notable representative of Alma-Ata art during the 1990's.

16 During the Parade of Galleries exhibitions, each gallery in turn put on its own show-presentation Gallery Day.

17 Kanat Ibragimov - during the 1990's a radical artist.

18 Kamilla Li - a specialist on art and an official in the area of art.

It is well known that Soviet art schools, having overcome and quelled the revolutionary tactics of the avant-garde, based their education and techniques on those of the Russian Empire, and looked even further back, to the models of Classical Antiquity, for their aesthetic ideals. Numerous copies of antique sculpture were kept in all art schools and institutions of the USSR. Working from these models was mandatory, and the ready availability of them paramount, because the process of teaching Socialist Realist artists was impossible without academic drawing from these old examples. The Communist future was represented as being as much an ideal as the antique past. Ancient Greek sculptures were peculiar ‘objects of Communist propaganda’, and Soviet past, as Viktor Misiano said, was our antiquity.

The idea of the action Classics Bidding Farewell to the People emerged in the mid-90s as a reaction to the parting with and separation from the recent Soviet epoch. People has been abandoned by their country, and the promised future dissipated like the Communist dream, yielding to the realities of the present. Many people survived by becoming street vendors, taking part in the daily and nightly street commerce that bloomed at this time. At night, they would light up their simple goods with candles.

We wanted going to ‘correct’ reality a bit—to give it some metaphor. On one summer evening in 1997 in one of these spontaneous markets in Almaty, instead of usual candles wax sculptures people could observe torsos, busts and heads from ancient Greece and Rome. That way, the fragments of antique culture served the needs of common people. Having ceased to be everlasting symbols of our unclear past/future, they “actualised”—they became the product of the present.

It is well known that Soviet art schools, having overcome and quelled the revolutionary tactics of the avant-garde, based their education and techniques on those of the Russian Empire, and looked even further back, to the models of Classical Antiquity, for their aesthetic ideals. Numerous copies of antique sculpture were kept in all art schools and institutions of the USSR. Working from these models was mandatory, and the ready availability of them paramount, because the process of teaching Socialist Realist artists was impossible without academic drawing from these old examples. The Communist future was represented as being as much an ideal as the antique past. Ancient Greek sculptures were peculiar ‘objects of Communist propaganda’, and Soviet past, as Viktor Misiano said, was our antiquity.

The idea of the action Classics Bidding Farewell to the People emerged in the mid-90s as a reaction to the parting with and separation from the recent Soviet epoch. People has been abandoned by their country, and the promised future dissipated like the Communist dream, yielding to the realities of the present. Many people survived by becoming street vendors, taking part in the daily and nightly street commerce that bloomed at this time. At night, they would light up their simple goods with candles.

We wanted going to ‘correct’ reality a bit—to give it some metaphor. On one summer evening in 1997 in one of these spontaneous markets in Almaty, instead of usual candles wax sculptures people could observe torsos, busts and heads from ancient Greece and Rome. That way, the fragments of antique culture served the needs of common people. Having ceased to be everlasting symbols of our unclear past/future, they “actualised”—they became the product of the present.

It is well known that Soviet art schools, having overcome and quelled the revolutionary tactics of the avant-garde, based their education and techniques on those of the Russian Empire, and looked even further back, to the models of Classical Antiquity, for their aesthetic ideals. Numerous copies of antique sculpture were kept in all art schools and institutions of the USSR. Working from these models was mandatory, and the ready availability of them paramount, because the process of teaching Socialist Realist artists was impossible without academic drawing from these old examples. The Communist future was represented as being as much an ideal as the antique past. Ancient Greek sculptures were peculiar ‘objects of Communist propaganda’, and Soviet past, as Viktor Misiano said, was our antiquity.

The idea of the action Classics Bidding Farewell to the People emerged in the mid-90s as a reaction to the parting with and separation from the recent Soviet epoch. People has been abandoned by their country, and the promised future dissipated like the Communist dream, yielding to the realities of the present. Many people survived by becoming street vendors, taking part in the daily and nightly street commerce that bloomed at this time. At night, they would light up their simple goods with candles.

We wanted going to ‘correct’ reality a bit—to give it some metaphor. On one summer evening in 1997 in one of these spontaneous markets in Almaty, instead of usual candles wax sculptures people could observe torsos, busts and heads from ancient Greece and Rome. That way, the fragments of antique culture served the needs of common people. Having ceased to be everlasting symbols of our unclear past/future, they “actualised”—they became the product of the present.

It is well known that Soviet art schools, having overcome and quelled the revolutionary tactics of the avant-garde, based their education and techniques on those of the Russian Empire, and looked even further back, to the models of Classical Antiquity, for their aesthetic ideals. Numerous copies of antique sculpture were kept in all art schools and institutions of the USSR. Working from these models was mandatory, and the ready availability of them paramount, because the process of teaching Socialist Realist artists was impossible without academic drawing from these old examples. The Communist future was represented as being as much an ideal as the antique past. Ancient Greek sculptures were peculiar ‘objects of Communist propaganda’, and Soviet past, as Viktor Misiano said, was our antiquity.

The idea of the action Classics Bidding Farewell to the People emerged in the mid-90s as a reaction to the parting with and separation from the recent Soviet epoch. People has been abandoned by their country, and the promised future dissipated like the Communist dream, yielding to the realities of the present. Many people survived by becoming street vendors, taking part in the daily and nightly street commerce that bloomed at this time. At night, they would light up their simple goods with candles.

We wanted going to ‘correct’ reality a bit—to give it some metaphor. On one summer evening in 1997 in one of these spontaneous markets in Almaty, instead of usual candles wax sculptures people could observe torsos, busts and heads from ancient Greece and Rome. That way, the fragments of antique culture served the needs of common people. Having ceased to be everlasting symbols of our unclear past/future, they “actualised”—they became the product of the present.

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilisation and eventually turns into nothing, but a stone has some chance to remain on the planet for a couple of million years. After millions of years have passed these objects of nature become art objects at the artist’s will. From time to time we find ‘petrifactions’ up in our mountains, where one can’t find any other sign of the great civilizations of the past. It is like a simulation of archaeology. Today, the myths of the heroic Past of Kazakhstan are welcomed, and the more fantastic and courageous the pictures that these historians’ imaginations depict, the more everyone believes in them. Artefacts confirming these concepts are venerated. As for us: we are trying to create some sort of myth of the Great Present. The series Petrifactions is something like a restoration of temporal fairness by way of ‘immortalising’ consumer goods. While you would never see the outward look of a European academic art education, a sculpture that doesn’t quite look as though it was made by human hands meets our historical notion of the ‘ideal’. When forced to contemplate a petrified iron, a mobile phone, a bulb or a tea-pot, you are displaced into the museum of the Future, where these exhibits are displayed as strange, venerated archaeological evidence, as the witness of our Present.

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilisation and eventually turns into nothing, but a stone has some chance to remain on the planet for a couple of million years. After millions of years have passed these objects of nature become art objects at the artist’s will. From time to time we find ‘petrifactions’ up in our mountains, where one can’t find any other sign of the great civilizations of the past. It is like a simulation of archaeology. Today, the myths of the heroic Past of Kazakhstan are welcomed, and the more fantastic and courageous the pictures that these historians’ imaginations depict, the more everyone believes in them. Artefacts confirming these concepts are venerated. As for us: we are trying to create some sort of myth of the Great Present. The series Petrifactions is something like a restoration of temporal fairness by way of ‘immortalising’ consumer goods. While you would never see the outward look of a European academic art education, a sculpture that doesn’t quite look as though it was made by human hands meets our historical notion of the ‘ideal’. When forced to contemplate a petrified iron, a mobile phone, a bulb or a tea-pot, you are displaced into the museum of the Future, where these exhibits are displayed as strange, venerated archaeological evidence, as the witness of our Present.

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilisation and eventually turns into nothing, but a stone has some chance to remain on the planet for a couple of million years. After millions of years have passed these objects of nature become art objects at the artist’s will. From time to time we find ‘petrifactions’ up in our mountains, where one can’t find any other sign of the great civilizations of the past. It is like a simulation of archaeology. Today, the myths of the heroic Past of Kazakhstan are welcomed, and the more fantastic and courageous the pictures that these historians’ imaginations depict, the more everyone believes in them. Artefacts confirming these concepts are venerated. As for us: we are trying to create some sort of myth of the Great Present. The series Petrifactions is something like a restoration of temporal fairness by way of ‘immortalising’ consumer goods. While you would never see the outward look of a European academic art education, a sculpture that doesn’t quite look as though it was made by human hands meets our historical notion of the ‘ideal’. When forced to contemplate a petrified iron, a mobile phone, a bulb or a tea-pot, you are displaced into the museum of the Future, where these exhibits are displayed as strange, venerated archaeological evidence, as the witness of our Present.

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilisation and eventually turns into nothing, but a stone has some chance to remain on the planet for a couple of million years. After millions of years have passed these objects of nature become art objects at the artist’s will. From time to time we find ‘petrifactions’ up in our mountains, where one can’t find any other sign of the great civilizations of the past. It is like a simulation of archaeology. Today, the myths of the heroic Past of Kazakhstan are welcomed, and the more fantastic and courageous the pictures that these historians’ imaginations depict, the more everyone believes in them. Artefacts confirming these concepts are venerated. As for us: we are trying to create some sort of myth of the Great Present. The series Petrifactions is something like a restoration of temporal fairness by way of ‘immortalising’ consumer goods. While you would never see the outward look of a European academic art education, a sculpture that doesn’t quite look as though it was made by human hands meets our historical notion of the ‘ideal’. When forced to contemplate a petrified iron, a mobile phone, a bulb or a tea-pot, you are displaced into the museum of the Future, where these exhibits are displayed as strange, venerated archaeological evidence, as the witness of our Present.

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilisation and eventually turns into nothing, but a stone has some chance to remain on the planet for a couple of million years. After millions of years have passed these objects of nature become art objects at the artist’s will. From time to time we find ‘petrifactions’ up in our mountains, where one can’t find any other sign of the great civilizations of the past. It is like a simulation of archaeology. Today, the myths of the heroic Past of Kazakhstan are welcomed, and the more fantastic and courageous the pictures that these historians’ imaginations depict, the more everyone believes in them. Artefacts confirming these concepts are venerated. As for us: we are trying to create some sort of myth of the Great Present. The series Petrifactions is something like a restoration of temporal fairness by way of ‘immortalising’ consumer goods. While you would never see the outward look of a European academic art education, a sculpture that doesn’t quite look as though it was made by human hands meets our historical notion of the ‘ideal’. When forced to contemplate a petrified iron, a mobile phone, a bulb or a tea-pot, you are displaced into the museum of the Future, where these exhibits are displayed as strange, venerated archaeological evidence, as the witness of our Present.

They fascinate us, like Hitchcock’s thrillers. You approach them with horror and a sense of irreversibility Their black holes stare at us, safeguarding the secrets of the Underworld. You want to look into them and see nothing. Terrified by them, you run away, as if the devil was running after you. You reminisce them while having tea during a cosy summer evening, and you know they exist.

Elena Vorobyeva

The ability to leisurely observe the bustle flickering by through the car window is the privilege of a passeger in daily trips around town. At some moment, “beauty” sailing by overhead catches your eye. A necklace string joins together the two “shores” of the street. “Luxury and splendour” lie against the blue of a bottomless sky, and the sky acquires the corporeality of a blue-blooded beauty. The jewels of Cartier and Swarovski are little baubles in comparison with the sweep of the “jewelry” of the masters of advertising from our GorOformlenie company. Only they know what to gift the sky.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The ability to leisurely observe the bustle flickering by through the car window is the privilege of a passeger in daily trips around town. At some moment, “beauty” sailing by overhead catches your eye. A necklace string joins together the two “shores” of the street. “Luxury and splendour” lie against the blue of a bottomless sky, and the sky acquires the corporeality of a blue-blooded beauty. The jewels of Cartier and Swarovski are little baubles in comparison with the sweep of the “jewelry” of the masters of advertising from our GorOformlenie company. Only they know what to gift the sky.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The ability to leisurely observe the bustle flickering by through the car window is the privilege of a passeger in daily trips around town. At some moment, “beauty” sailing by overhead catches your eye. A necklace string joins together the two “shores” of the street. “Luxury and splendour” lie against the blue of a bottomless sky, and the sky acquires the corporeality of a blue-blooded beauty. The jewels of Cartier and Swarovski are little baubles in comparison with the sweep of the “jewelry” of the masters of advertising from our GorOformlenie company. Only they know what to gift the sky.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The ability to leisurely observe the bustle flickering by through the car window is the privilege of a passeger in daily trips around town. At some moment, “beauty” sailing by overhead catches your eye. A necklace string joins together the two “shores” of the street. “Luxury and splendour” lie against the blue of a bottomless sky, and the sky acquires the corporeality of a blue-blooded beauty. The jewels of Cartier and Swarovski are little baubles in comparison with the sweep of the “jewelry” of the masters of advertising from our GorOformlenie company. Only they know what to gift the sky.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The ability to leisurely observe the bustle flickering by through the car window is the privilege of a passeger in daily trips around town. At some moment, “beauty” sailing by overhead catches your eye. A necklace string joins together the two “shores” of the street. “Luxury and splendour” lie against the blue of a bottomless sky, and the sky acquires the corporeality of a blue-blooded beauty. The jewels of Cartier and Swarovski are little baubles in comparison with the sweep of the “jewelry” of the masters of advertising from our GorOformlenie company. Only they know what to gift the sky.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

"Quick Production of Autumn" is one of our works, where we use the method of combining ordinary things in unusual circumstances. This is a metaphor for accelerating the technologization of the world, accelerating all civilized processes, prioritisation of egoistic will and anthropocentrism as a central idea. Modern man has no time to wait for nature to do its slow work. But by “installing” a red-hot iron (technological object) in the natural environment, instead of autumn, we get an elementary “burn”.

Elena Vorobyeva

The work “Winter Sublimating Object” is a kind of illustration of the combination of two definitions of the term “sublimation” - physical and psychological. From the physicists point of view, sublimation is the transition of a substance from a solid to a gaseous state bypassing the liquid stage.

From the psychologists point of view, sublimation is the transformation of libidinal energy (internal tension) into creative energy.

So an attempt to boil water in a kettle turns into the disappearance (evaporation) of the kettle itself. By a simple manipulation we achieve the goal - the metaphor gets hooked. And this another crazy tea party and every artist’s dream.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2017

The work “Winter Sublimating Object” is a kind of illustration of the combination of two definitions of the term “sublimation” - physical and psychological. From the physicists point of view, sublimation is the transition of a substance from a solid to a gaseous state bypassing the liquid stage.

From the psychologists point of view, sublimation is the transformation of libidinal energy (internal tension) into creative energy.

So an attempt to boil water in a kettle turns into the disappearance (evaporation) of the kettle itself. By a simple manipulation we achieve the goal - the metaphor gets hooked. And this another crazy tea party and every artist’s dream.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2017

In April 2002 we took part in the international travelling workshop ‘Non-Silk Road’ organised by a group of Almaty artists and the public association ‘Asia-Art+’. It was a ten-day journey about Southern Kazakhstan. Our international company (as well as Kazakhstani artists there were the artists and curators from Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria) travelled over the steep, endless- seeming roads in a little bus from town to town. In the process of this displacement the project Photo for Memory. If the Mountain Doesn’t Go to Muhammad... was realised. People who we didn’t know, who we found and found us by accident fell into the sphere of our, as they say, “interactive action”.

We pretended to be “touring photographers”, with all the necessary equipment and accessories. In every place we arrived in, we asked our volunteers to choose a background and have their photo taken. For our backgrounds, we had big posters with pictures of standard tourist destinations and sights: the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, and New York with the now-destroyed towers of World Trade Center. We had prepared this poster deliberately. Many people already had in their minds an image of New York City – one with a range and variety of skyscrapers. Only once did somebody mention that it was an image of the World Trade Center.

People posed with pleasure (knowing that it was free of charge), imagining to be transported to a totally other place – from Kazakhstan province to the famous sights of the Western world. There was something touching in concentration and confidence of the people looking at the object- mirror, having forgotten about their everyday troubles. Girls, in general, were eager to find themselves in Paris – the centre of perfumed beauty. Men preferred attractive New-York City, and middle-aged women dreamt to be in Moscow, the capital of former Soviet motherland, the USSR. All their dreams by our efforts came true. After the journey more than 50 shots were printed. All of them were sent by post to Zhanatas, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent; to the addresses of our accidental acquaintances.

In April 2002 we took part in the international travelling workshop ‘Non-Silk Road’ organised by a group of Almaty artists and the public association ‘Asia-Art+’. It was a ten-day journey about Southern Kazakhstan. Our international company (as well as Kazakhstani artists there were the artists and curators from Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria) travelled over the steep, endless- seeming roads in a little bus from town to town. In the process of this displacement the project Photo for Memory. If the Mountain Doesn’t Go to Muhammad... was realised. People who we didn’t know, who we found and found us by accident fell into the sphere of our, as they say, “interactive action”.

We pretended to be “touring photographers”, with all the necessary equipment and accessories. In every place we arrived in, we asked our volunteers to choose a background and have their photo taken. For our backgrounds, we had big posters with pictures of standard tourist destinations and sights: the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, and New York with the now-destroyed towers of World Trade Center. We had prepared this poster deliberately. Many people already had in their minds an image of New York City – one with a range and variety of skyscrapers. Only once did somebody mention that it was an image of the World Trade Center.

People posed with pleasure (knowing that it was free of charge), imagining to be transported to a totally other place – from Kazakhstan province to the famous sights of the Western world. There was something touching in concentration and confidence of the people looking at the object- mirror, having forgotten about their everyday troubles. Girls, in general, were eager to find themselves in Paris – the centre of perfumed beauty. Men preferred attractive New-York City, and middle-aged women dreamt to be in Moscow, the capital of former Soviet motherland, the USSR. All their dreams by our efforts came true. After the journey more than 50 shots were printed. All of them were sent by post to Zhanatas, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent; to the addresses of our accidental acquaintances.

In April 2002 we took part in the international travelling workshop ‘Non-Silk Road’ organised by a group of Almaty artists and the public association ‘Asia-Art+’. It was a ten-day journey about Southern Kazakhstan. Our international company (as well as Kazakhstani artists there were the artists and curators from Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria) travelled over the steep, endless- seeming roads in a little bus from town to town. In the process of this displacement the project Photo for Memory. If the Mountain Doesn’t Go to Muhammad... was realised. People who we didn’t know, who we found and found us by accident fell into the sphere of our, as they say, “interactive action”.

We pretended to be “touring photographers”, with all the necessary equipment and accessories. In every place we arrived in, we asked our volunteers to choose a background and have their photo taken. For our backgrounds, we had big posters with pictures of standard tourist destinations and sights: the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, and New York with the now-destroyed towers of World Trade Center. We had prepared this poster deliberately. Many people already had in their minds an image of New York City – one with a range and variety of skyscrapers. Only once did somebody mention that it was an image of the World Trade Center.

People posed with pleasure (knowing that it was free of charge), imagining to be transported to a totally other place – from Kazakhstan province to the famous sights of the Western world. There was something touching in concentration and confidence of the people looking at the object- mirror, having forgotten about their everyday troubles. Girls, in general, were eager to find themselves in Paris – the centre of perfumed beauty. Men preferred attractive New-York City, and middle-aged women dreamt to be in Moscow, the capital of former Soviet motherland, the USSR. All their dreams by our efforts came true. After the journey more than 50 shots were printed. All of them were sent by post to Zhanatas, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent; to the addresses of our accidental acquaintances.

In April 2002 we took part in the international travelling workshop ‘Non-Silk Road’ organised by a group of Almaty artists and the public association ‘Asia-Art+’. It was a ten-day journey about Southern Kazakhstan. Our international company (as well as Kazakhstani artists there were the artists and curators from Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria) travelled over the steep, endless- seeming roads in a little bus from town to town. In the process of this displacement the project Photo for Memory. If the Mountain Doesn’t Go to Muhammad... was realised. People who we didn’t know, who we found and found us by accident fell into the sphere of our, as they say, “interactive action”.

We pretended to be “touring photographers”, with all the necessary equipment and accessories. In every place we arrived in, we asked our volunteers to choose a background and have their photo taken. For our backgrounds, we had big posters with pictures of standard tourist destinations and sights: the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, and New York with the now-destroyed towers of World Trade Center. We had prepared this poster deliberately. Many people already had in their minds an image of New York City – one with a range and variety of skyscrapers. Only once did somebody mention that it was an image of the World Trade Center.

People posed with pleasure (knowing that it was free of charge), imagining to be transported to a totally other place – from Kazakhstan province to the famous sights of the Western world. There was something touching in concentration and confidence of the people looking at the object- mirror, having forgotten about their everyday troubles. Girls, in general, were eager to find themselves in Paris – the centre of perfumed beauty. Men preferred attractive New-York City, and middle-aged women dreamt to be in Moscow, the capital of former Soviet motherland, the USSR. All their dreams by our efforts came true. After the journey more than 50 shots were printed. All of them were sent by post to Zhanatas, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent; to the addresses of our accidental acquaintances.

In April 2002 we took part in the international travelling workshop ‘Non-Silk Road’ organised by a group of Almaty artists and the public association ‘Asia-Art+’. It was a ten-day journey about Southern Kazakhstan. Our international company (as well as Kazakhstani artists there were the artists and curators from Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria) travelled over the steep, endless- seeming roads in a little bus from town to town. In the process of this displacement the project Photo for Memory. If the Mountain Doesn’t Go to Muhammad... was realised. People who we didn’t know, who we found and found us by accident fell into the sphere of our, as they say, “interactive action”.

We pretended to be “touring photographers”, with all the necessary equipment and accessories. In every place we arrived in, we asked our volunteers to choose a background and have their photo taken. For our backgrounds, we had big posters with pictures of standard tourist destinations and sights: the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, and New York with the now-destroyed towers of World Trade Center. We had prepared this poster deliberately. Many people already had in their minds an image of New York City – one with a range and variety of skyscrapers. Only once did somebody mention that it was an image of the World Trade Center.

People posed with pleasure (knowing that it was free of charge), imagining to be transported to a totally other place – from Kazakhstan province to the famous sights of the Western world. There was something touching in concentration and confidence of the people looking at the object- mirror, having forgotten about their everyday troubles. Girls, in general, were eager to find themselves in Paris – the centre of perfumed beauty. Men preferred attractive New-York City, and middle-aged women dreamt to be in Moscow, the capital of former Soviet motherland, the USSR. All their dreams by our efforts came true. After the journey more than 50 shots were printed. All of them were sent by post to Zhanatas, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent; to the addresses of our accidental acquaintances.

The 1990s were years of profound change for Kazakhstan. The collapse of the Soviet system and declared sovereignty caused lots of problems—almost all social relations were destroyed, the economy fell into decay, the currency was devalued. Disoriented, people were trying to find some place to rest. Not so long ago private enterprises and the free market, called “speculation”, were banned, and then they became the economic base of new state. The word “privatisation” was in fashion at the time. What was public property under Socialism quickly fell into private hands, but the most of population got nothing. People had to do something to survive, at any cost. Most people, though mainly pensioners, carried everything they thought was worth something out of their flats and put it up for sale. The streets of Almaty were turned into a trade zone. Everything was for sale: shabby clothes, cut glass, spoons, military uniforms, nails, vinyl discs, disposable cutlery (having been used already), various books—from the classics of Marxism-Leninism to the Bible...

This phenomenon seemed interesting to us as a process that characterises the time, as well as being an aesthetic fact. The goods put on the ground represented some original ‘still life’ which could tell you everything about the seller: his personal story, passions, skills... We took photos of these objects and bought some of them to express our gratitude (usually some trivial thing). After every exchange, we asked the sellers about themselves, and got more of their story. For example, an old woman was selling two packs of cigarettes that were left by her dead husband. She offered them to us saying: “What do I need them for? I don’t smoke...” Or another woman that sold us old photos of Soviet actors said that she had a lot of them, as she had been collecting them since childhood.

As a whole, these ‘still lives’ were the picture of epochs changing. The close vicinity of ideological symbols—like records of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union—with ragged Barbie dolls made in China or “famous brand” cosmetics of doubtful origin could tell a lot. The “Eternal” values of the Communist Past had depreciated, and were sold for trifling sums side by side with the cheap goods of a consumerist Present. The same phenomenon took place in all the regions of ex-Soviet Union. And now one can find identical goods in similar bazaars whether in Russia, Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan. As long as all of us had common history during 70 years, national specificity concedes to the international.

Little by little we made up a rather big collection of bought objects and photographed ‘still lives’. By installing all of them in exhibition space we would like to show interrelated realities – the reality of exhibited object that can be touched, the reality of place documented in photo, where this object was taken from, the reality of each person’s existence (the owner of the object), the reality of time (history), and the reality of this eventual interpersonal contact.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2006

The 1990s were years of profound change for Kazakhstan. The collapse of the Soviet system and declared sovereignty caused lots of problems—almost all social relations were destroyed, the economy fell into decay, the currency was devalued. Disoriented, people were trying to find some place to rest. Not so long ago private enterprises and the free market, called “speculation”, were banned, and then they became the economic base of new state. The word “privatisation” was in fashion at the time. What was public property under Socialism quickly fell into private hands, but the most of population got nothing. People had to do something to survive, at any cost. Most people, though mainly pensioners, carried everything they thought was worth something out of their flats and put it up for sale. The streets of Almaty were turned into a trade zone. Everything was for sale: shabby clothes, cut glass, spoons, military uniforms, nails, vinyl discs, disposable cutlery (having been used already), various books—from the classics of Marxism-Leninism to the Bible...

This phenomenon seemed interesting to us as a process that characterises the time, as well as being an aesthetic fact. The goods put on the ground represented some original ‘still life’ which could tell you everything about the seller: his personal story, passions, skills... We took photos of these objects and bought some of them to express our gratitude (usually some trivial thing). After every exchange, we asked the sellers about themselves, and got more of their story. For example, an old woman was selling two packs of cigarettes that were left by her dead husband. She offered them to us saying: “What do I need them for? I don’t smoke...” Or another woman that sold us old photos of Soviet actors said that she had a lot of them, as she had been collecting them since childhood.

As a whole, these ‘still lives’ were the picture of epochs changing. The close vicinity of ideological symbols—like records of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union—with ragged Barbie dolls made in China or “famous brand” cosmetics of doubtful origin could tell a lot. The “Eternal” values of the Communist Past had depreciated, and were sold for trifling sums side by side with the cheap goods of a consumerist Present. The same phenomenon took place in all the regions of ex-Soviet Union. And now one can find identical goods in similar bazaars whether in Russia, Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan. As long as all of us had common history during 70 years, national specificity concedes to the international.

Little by little we made up a rather big collection of bought objects and photographed ‘still lives’. By installing all of them in exhibition space we would like to show interrelated realities – the reality of exhibited object that can be touched, the reality of place documented in photo, where this object was taken from, the reality of each person’s existence (the owner of the object), the reality of time (history), and the reality of this eventual interpersonal contact.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2006

Banal comparisons of the city to an anthill are not without basis, due to the visuals similarity in their spatial organization and functioning. Subject to the elementary needs predominated by nature, both these biological creations change the environment by transforming it into complex communications structures. The differences begin on the level of reflection, where an effort is required to understand the conditions of one's own existence. As the basic instrument for the survival of ant communities, instinct aids the slow process of change in insect behaviour. Evolutionary changes in the genetic memory result in a change of the species. Remaining practically unchanged as a species and using information technology, humans, in contrast, revolutionise the process by which living space is opened up and undeveloped territories conquered.

The more rapidly information is transmitted the more rapidly the landscapes around us change. This "new" technologised nature determines a new level of interrelations among people by forming new fields of intersecting communications. Globalisation is a result of the information boom, and because its predetermined, it will not pass by the world, which develops in accordance with the laws of civilization. And any attempts to resist this process resemble the attempt of a rebellious ant to resist its own instinct.

In the future, spreading out like coral reefs, urban structures decentralise, while the world, deprived of capitals, sprawls across the planet as a single huge province.

City dwellers know no other nature than that which has surrounded the since birth. They have adapted to it alone. Conforming to the rhythms and laws of the city life, the individual becomes merely one component of the urban organism. The human mass pulses like a blood through the arteries of the streets, filling the voids the streets themselves have created...

Distinctions among people are based solely in their means of locomotion and depend on who you are - a driver or a pedestrian. Pedestrians are primarily simply potential victims concerned about their own safety. Cautiously overcoming obstacles - the turbulent "rivers" of vehicles - and avoiding the herds of wild animals - :automobiles' - pedestrians proceed toward their own personality determined destinations. As for the drivers, in these conditions they become potential predators, subconsciously repressing the desire to attack some heedless victim.

Human psychological states are framed by the reality of the city streets. One of these states is anticipation. The tension of inactive anticipation alternates with the rapid discharge of active moment. At such moments there is an imperceptible shift from one psychological quality to another. Passivity alternating with activity determines the rhythm of daily life. An ordinary intersection becomes a place where the human psyche undergoes qualitative changes.

Possessing the illusion of free will, we perform a function assigned by someone or something from on high. In other words, reason is a manifestation of instinct all the same. And there's no arguing with instinct...

Yelena Vorobyeva

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

We became interested in ‘socio-colouristic’ relations while traveling in the south of Kazakhstan in 2002. As participants of the international project ‘Non-Silk Road’, we visited several provincial towns. In the town of Taraz, our attention was drawn to the decorative bas-reliefs with pictures featuring blue banners on one of the old administrative buildings. These banners used to be red. This blatant repainting of Soviet decorations seemed striking, and provided the best possible illustration of the change of political epochs. The state symbols that had been canonised by the Communists were now subject to total ‘de-sacralisation’. As the main sign of all things Soviet, the colour red was repressed and replaced by other privileged colours all over post-Soviet space.

After the republic declared its independence the Kazakh flag became blue. To be more precise, its colour is what you call kok in the Kazakh language—kok means both blue and green. Kok also means “sky”, while koktem means “spring” and kokteu means “becoming green”, etc.. Fraught with meaning and symbolising many things – the “Eternal Blue Sky” in Tengrism, the nauryz pagan celebration of spring, the blue domes of the Islamic mosques, a dream of the inaccessible ocean’s vast expanse—the colour blue was accepted by the majority and entered the mind of the people as the best, most “appropriate” colour. The people of Kazakhstan simply love the colour blue. How else can one otherwise explain all of this repainting, which almost seems like an obsession? Questions about colour no longer arise: if something has to be painted, there is already a solution at the ready: the colour kok. Kok is Kazakhstan’s best-selling type of paint. Everything is painted with it: fences, kiosks, walls, benches, even the crosses on graves. The sphere of the colour’s use is as large as life itself. Objects of the ‘blue period’ are everywhere, in the most different places and in the strangest combinations. There is a feeling that you are living within a ‘project’, and that the Steppe is a huge exhibition space that exhibits a set of artefacts. The various strata of cultures, which have accumulated here during the time of its development by man, are specifically perceived in this vein. Materialised in the “blue dream” of “eternal spring”, the colour blue has spread throughout the territory of Kazakhstan, adding some optimistic lustre to the dim nature of our steppe.

In this way, it could be that society, in ‘yearning after’ its bygone integrity, is reacting to the instability and the fluidity of the transitional period’s changing situation. The aspirations toward unity are subconsciously realised through identificatory signs—colour marks that do not only designate membership in a concrete community, but also signify a belonging to the ‘Divine’, to Power. This is a kind of charm, just in case...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2005

The ornament as part of folk culture is viewed as endowed with magical properties. Any regime which resorts to various methods of enchanting, bespelling the people will seriously utilize these aspects of the traditional ornament. As a result, becoming a function the ornament is transformed into an instrument of political influence. There occurs a universal “ornamentalisation” of the populace, which is regarded as the “foundation”, an object to which the craft of magic may be applied in order to create a global pattern.

We observed the same thing during the Soviet period. Only then all our nations were part of a great “communist carpet” that covered the entire space of the Soviet Union. Profiles of leaders who strove for “communism” constituted the center of the “composition”, while the nations formed a fringe around it, that is, they were fragments of patterns on the periphery of ideology. When a carpet wears out, the center is the first to tear. This was how a big ideological hole developed, while the edges remained whole. They were torn off, as was to be expected. Small carpets were dispersed across the territory, each one with its own specific national pattern. The decorative symmetrical design ceased being simply decorative: it started to play an independent role and took on itself ideological functions in the system of new states.

Basically, it is unimportant, which ornament’s contours are used for “ornamentalising” the populace – Russian Turkmen, Armenian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, or Byelorussian. What matters is that in the past the ornamented things were close to a person, that they were part of the personal, intimate sphere, and that they influenced life through hidden sacral meanings. In today’s authoritarian world universal ornamentation of surfaces has been imposed from on high: it is tasked with establishing some kind of order out of people’s fear of chaos. It is presumed that each person must take on a certain form, must fit into a pattern, become a twist in a branching line, one of the ends of the solar sign, or a part of a “ram’s horn” ornament. This symmetrical road is endlessly repetitive and always brings us back to the starting point. One can wander in this labyrinth for a long time, only one must bear in mind that mechanical projection of former magical practices into the real world leads to imitation and does not bring about the necessary result. Over time, the ornament loses its sorcerous force and, in the end, becomes a formal sign of identification.

Yelena Vorobyeva 2015

The ornament as part of folk culture is viewed as endowed with magical properties. Any regime which resorts to various methods of enchanting, bespelling the people will seriously utilize these aspects of the traditional ornament. As a result, becoming a function the ornament is transformed into an instrument of political influence. There occurs a universal “ornamentalisation” of the populace, which is regarded as the “foundation”, an object to which the craft of magic may be applied in order to create a global pattern.

We observed the same thing during the Soviet period. Only then all our nations were part of a great “communist carpet” that covered the entire space of the Soviet Union. Profiles of leaders who strove for “communism” constituted the center of the “composition”, while the nations formed a fringe around it, that is, they were fragments of patterns on the periphery of ideology. When a carpet wears out, the center is the first to tear. This was how a big ideological hole developed, while the edges remained whole. They were torn off, as was to be expected. Small carpets were dispersed across the territory, each one with its own specific national pattern. The decorative symmetrical design ceased being simply decorative: it started to play an independent role and took on itself ideological functions in the system of new states.

Basically, it is unimportant, which ornament’s contours are used for “ornamentalising” the populace – Russian Turkmen, Armenian, Kazakh, Ukrainian, or Byelorussian. What matters is that in the past the ornamented things were close to a person, that they were part of the personal, intimate sphere, and that they influenced life through hidden sacral meanings. In today’s authoritarian world universal ornamentation of surfaces has been imposed from on high: it is tasked with establishing some kind of order out of people’s fear of chaos. It is presumed that each person must take on a certain form, must fit into a pattern, become a twist in a branching line, one of the ends of the solar sign, or a part of a “ram’s horn” ornament. This symmetrical road is endlessly repetitive and always brings us back to the starting point. One can wander in this labyrinth for a long time, only one must bear in mind that mechanical projection of former magical practices into the real world leads to imitation and does not bring about the necessary result. Over time, the ornament loses its sorcerous force and, in the end, becomes a formal sign of identification.

Yelena Vorobyeva 2015

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

At one time or another everyone has been photographed "for a document", and has assumed a pose required by “Big Brother”. Having received more photographs than necessary (usually more are printed than are required), and having used just one or two for a specific or official purpose, the rest remain unused. These photos—2x3 or 3x4, with unnaturally frozen, frightened faces—can now be found in old photo albums; evidence, or relics, of enduring bureaucratic procedures. Already no one remembers the documents the photos were made for—your Komsomol card, student card, or then for your trade union card. The documents were lost: there is no more USSR; the country which needed them so much. Only, or perhaps however, the purposeless photo is left.

Having rummaged in archives I found many of my and Viktor’s “inartistic” photos of ourselves from different years, transforming them into part of an artistic composition. These photographic images, missing privacy from the very beginning, here become fragments, elements, or some parts of an ornament. In fact, this is the purpose of the government machine: every time it makes photos of its citizens.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2013

Due to a gulf within our society we perceive modern reality as a kind of Surreal landscape. Although physically ‘in’ the country and ‘inside’ a constructed, social body we feel separated from this social environment as though by a translucent film. A kind of play is being performed in front and around us, visible to anyone who has any contact with the media. There is no life beyond this media space: if you do not have a Facebook page you do not exist. The Surrealism of this surrounding reality is increased even more when new characters, ‘activists’, who fight against this ‘reality’, appear on the stage. As they engage with this environment they before part of the landscape, a mere fragment of it. The artist, and indeed any thinking person, is once again left behind the scenes; underground. In the 1970s the Moscow Conceptualists organised trips to the countryside. Withdrawing themselves from a Soviet, urban context and the realities of the Brezhnev stagnation, Kollektivnie deistviya (Collective Actions) group moved to a place ‘free’ from these Sovietisms and created their own artistic context. They were artists and their medium at the same time. Our trips to the countryside were dictated by more or less the same desires: to get rid of imposed stereotypes of existence, and to create a suitable metaphor for describing the situation ‘outside the media’, or ‘outside of society’. This resulted in a number of projects.

Due to a gulf within our society we perceive modern reality as a kind of Surreal landscape. Although physically ‘in’ the country and ‘inside’ a constructed, social body we feel separated from this social environment as though by a translucent film. A kind of play is being performed in front and around us, visible to anyone who has any contact with the media. There is no life beyond this media space: if you do not have a Facebook page you do not exist. The Surrealism of this surrounding reality is increased even more when new characters, ‘activists’, who fight against this ‘reality’, appear on the stage. As they engage with this environment they before part of the landscape, a mere fragment of it. The artist, and indeed any thinking person, is once again left behind the scenes; underground. In the 1970s the Moscow Conceptualists organised trips to the countryside. Withdrawing themselves from a Soviet, urban context and the realities of the Brezhnev stagnation, Kollektivnie deistviya (Collective Actions) group moved to a place ‘free’ from these Sovietisms and created their own artistic context. They were artists and their medium at the same time. Our trips to the countryside were dictated by more or less the same desires: to get rid of imposed stereotypes of existence, and to create a suitable metaphor for describing the situation ‘outside the media’, or ‘outside of society’. This resulted in a number of projects.

In its formal qualities this photo project is a puzzle, which can be solved by a close inspection of the photographs. We move a ‘person’ from an urban environment—his or her usual context—to a snowy deserted landscape, where this person ‘continues’ their journey.

The project was made in several stages. First, we would take photos on the street of passersby (we were ‘stealing images’). Then we made full-length, black and white flat models in card of the people we caught on camera. In the countryside, in the snow, we then set up this ‘figure’ and shot a panorama of the landscape from a certain distance, in order to create an illusion of a real person walking. After that, we moved exactly the same distance away from the figure on the other side and shot the ‘reverse side of the landscape’. In this second photo you can see the reverse side of the card figure, with its wooden structure showing, and the landscape seems to reveal its reverse side too. The landscape is reversed, whereas the person looses his or her ‘soul’. The exhibition consists of four panoramas, including the ‘recto’ and ‘verso’ of the landscapes. Four story-panoramas will be shown in one horizontal line. The exhibition is completed with a visual clue as to our activities—four small photographs of the original places where the figures were shot.

In its formal qualities this photo project is a puzzle, which can be solved by a close inspection of the photographs. We move a ‘person’ from an urban environment—his or her usual context—to a snowy deserted landscape, where this person ‘continues’ their journey.

The project was made in several stages. First, we would take photos on the street of passersby (we were ‘stealing images’). Then we made full-length, black and white flat models in card of the people we caught on camera. In the countryside, in the snow, we then set up this ‘figure’ and shot a panorama of the landscape from a certain distance, in order to create an illusion of a real person walking. After that, we moved exactly the same distance away from the figure on the other side and shot the ‘reverse side of the landscape’. In this second photo you can see the reverse side of the card figure, with its wooden structure showing, and the landscape seems to reveal its reverse side too. The landscape is reversed, whereas the person looses his or her ‘soul’. The exhibition consists of four panoramas, including the ‘recto’ and ‘verso’ of the landscapes. Four story-panoramas will be shown in one horizontal line. The exhibition is completed with a visual clue as to our activities—four small photographs of the original places where the figures were shot.

In its formal qualities this photo project is a puzzle, which can be solved by a close inspection of the photographs. We move a ‘person’ from an urban environment—his or her usual context—to a snowy deserted landscape, where this person ‘continues’ their journey.

The project was made in several stages. First, we would take photos on the street of passersby (we were ‘stealing images’). Then we made full-length, black and white flat models in card of the people we caught on camera. In the countryside, in the snow, we then set up this ‘figure’ and shot a panorama of the landscape from a certain distance, in order to create an illusion of a real person walking. After that, we moved exactly the same distance away from the figure on the other side and shot the ‘reverse side of the landscape’. In this second photo you can see the reverse side of the card figure, with its wooden structure showing, and the landscape seems to reveal its reverse side too. The landscape is reversed, whereas the person looses his or her ‘soul’. The exhibition consists of four panoramas, including the ‘recto’ and ‘verso’ of the landscapes. Four story-panoramas will be shown in one horizontal line. The exhibition is completed with a visual clue as to our activities—four small photographs of the original places where the figures were shot.

The glitter of glamour is a sign that you belong to the global world. By sprinkling yourself with spangles you create the illusion of partaking in the world of the stars. The glamourisation of life is the natural process of being drawn into the structure of Western values of entertainment and advertising. But you also need to adapt all of the skills acquired over the ages in order to take your place in the sparkling and enticing order of things, to fit right in.

Is it worth wasting time and energy on the incomprehensible "road to success"?

But your own dear pathway of felt will do quite nicely. Warm, soft, homey. Step boldly, Zhuldyz-Stars, and happiness is yours - a happy ending. Red Carpet - it's written like it should be, you won't be deceived.

Here all the girl models are bathing their eyelashes in time to the drum, there is a spreading rosy fog of aromas, a rustle of bills with a portrait in an oval in the middle, DJs shamanising, the flash of necklaces, and cameras, cameras, cameras...

So everything's fine, everything's like everybody else's.

Trends and brands and bim-bam-bam, under the table sits the boogey man...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The glitter of glamour is a sign that you belong to the global world. By sprinkling yourself with spangles you create the illusion of partaking in the world of the stars. The glamourisation of life is the natural process of being drawn into the structure of Western values of entertainment and advertising. But you also need to adapt all of the skills acquired over the ages in order to take your place in the sparkling and enticing order of things, to fit right in.

Is it worth wasting time and energy on the incomprehensible "road to success"?

But your own dear pathway of felt will do quite nicely. Warm, soft, homey. Step boldly, Zhuldyz-Stars, and happiness is yours - a happy ending. Red Carpet - it's written like it should be, you won't be deceived.

Here all the girl models are bathing their eyelashes in time to the drum, there is a spreading rosy fog of aromas, a rustle of bills with a portrait in an oval in the middle, DJs shamanising, the flash of necklaces, and cameras, cameras, cameras...

So everything's fine, everything's like everybody else's.

Trends and brands and bim-bam-bam, under the table sits the boogey man...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The glitter of glamour is a sign that you belong to the global world. By sprinkling yourself with spangles you create the illusion of partaking in the world of the stars. The glamourisation of life is the natural process of being drawn into the structure of Western values of entertainment and advertising. But you also need to adapt all of the skills acquired over the ages in order to take your place in the sparkling and enticing order of things, to fit right in.

Is it worth wasting time and energy on the incomprehensible "road to success"?

But your own dear pathway of felt will do quite nicely. Warm, soft, homey. Step boldly, Zhuldyz-Stars, and happiness is yours - a happy ending. Red Carpet - it's written like it should be, you won't be deceived.

Here all the girl models are bathing their eyelashes in time to the drum, there is a spreading rosy fog of aromas, a rustle of bills with a portrait in an oval in the middle, DJs shamanising, the flash of necklaces, and cameras, cameras, cameras...

So everything's fine, everything's like everybody else's.

Trends and brands and bim-bam-bam, under the table sits the boogey man...

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The words ‘iron curtain’ are clear to everyone who lived in the USSR. Invisible yet impenetrable border was felt on mental level. Everything from the other side of the ‘curtain’ was like from another universe, another world and, in fact, was did not exist for a Soviet person. Only a flight to the Moon was a bit less feasible adventure than a trip abroad. Any foreigner, as an alien, evoked curiosity, suspicion and subconscious fear. ‘Iron curtain’ was a concrete wall protecting us from the ‘hostile bourgeois’ information and maintaining the purity of Homo Soveticus’ consciousness.

The fence that we found in Almaty outskirts in the middle of 2000s reminded us of the power of the Soviet empire. It was a real metaphor for the myth about the impossibility of deleting anything from history. Instead of prioritising the common we prioritise the private, the ‘curtain’ was readjusted and became a simple fence.

Years have passed, the fence was kept in use, and the emblems of the Republics have tarnished. As if trying to hide the red essence of the symbols, people paint the fence with green colour in vain.

Yes, Islamite green is beginning to cover parts, which used to contain the Communist red before. However, perhaps it only looks like everything Soviet is gone. It still serves us in the form of fences, window blinders and so on. We are still living in the tarnished everlasting post-Soviet reality, not paying it too much attention being distracted by the radiant omnipresent glamour of today.

The words ‘iron curtain’ are clear to everyone who lived in the USSR. Invisible yet impenetrable border was felt on mental level. Everything from the other side of the ‘curtain’ was like from another universe, another world and, in fact, was did not exist for a Soviet person. Only a flight to the Moon was a bit less feasible adventure than a trip abroad. Any foreigner, as an alien, evoked curiosity, suspicion and subconscious fear. ‘Iron curtain’ was a concrete wall protecting us from the ‘hostile bourgeois’ information and maintaining the purity of Homo Soveticus’ consciousness.

The fence that we found in Almaty outskirts in the middle of 2000s reminded us of the power of the Soviet empire. It was a real metaphor for the myth about the impossibility of deleting anything from history. Instead of prioritising the common we prioritise the private, the ‘curtain’ was readjusted and became a simple fence.

Years have passed, the fence was kept in use, and the emblems of the Republics have tarnished. As if trying to hide the red essence of the symbols, people paint the fence with green colour in vain.

Yes, Islamite green is beginning to cover parts, which used to contain the Communist red before. However, perhaps it only looks like everything Soviet is gone. It still serves us in the form of fences, window blinders and so on. We are still living in the tarnished everlasting post-Soviet reality, not paying it too much attention being distracted by the radiant omnipresent glamour of today.

The words ‘iron curtain’ are clear to everyone who lived in the USSR. Invisible yet impenetrable border was felt on mental level. Everything from the other side of the ‘curtain’ was like from another universe, another world and, in fact, was did not exist for a Soviet person. Only a flight to the Moon was a bit less feasible adventure than a trip abroad. Any foreigner, as an alien, evoked curiosity, suspicion and subconscious fear. ‘Iron curtain’ was a concrete wall protecting us from the ‘hostile bourgeois’ information and maintaining the purity of Homo Soveticus’ consciousness.

The fence that we found in Almaty outskirts in the middle of 2000s reminded us of the power of the Soviet empire. It was a real metaphor for the myth about the impossibility of deleting anything from history. Instead of prioritising the common we prioritise the private, the ‘curtain’ was readjusted and became a simple fence.

Years have passed, the fence was kept in use, and the emblems of the Republics have tarnished. As if trying to hide the red essence of the symbols, people paint the fence with green colour in vain.

Yes, Islamite green is beginning to cover parts, which used to contain the Communist red before. However, perhaps it only looks like everything Soviet is gone. It still serves us in the form of fences, window blinders and so on. We are still living in the tarnished everlasting post-Soviet reality, not paying it too much attention being distracted by the radiant omnipresent glamour of today.

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

The world is full of objects, sounds, smells, lives. Like our house, which is not there. The trees, the flowers, the apricots and the dog are not there. The world is full only in the reflection. The reflection gives us answers to our questions. If we wish to learn what took place yesterday, the day before yesterday, in the previous century – the reflection will tell us about everything. The phantoms pass by, the spectres play, the tea kettle is boiling, the apricots are in flower. All this exists, but there – in the world beyond the looking-glass. There, where you had been, but are no longer.

We expected that our house would be demolished. We were told that it would be torn down so that in its place a road could be built. We waited for a long time, as if for a sentence to be carried out. Our old television set stood in the corner. When we would turn it off, it would continue to work – it transmitted the world, though the inner, domestic one, rather than the external. On the dark screen, we could glimpse the commotion, the New Year, the Christmas trees, the children, the kitchen. And the stillness, the interiors, the rooms, the books.

Now the house is not there. Cars speed through our bedroom, and dump trucks rattle by. Only the reflection remains, like a proof of life.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

As a socially oriented cultural phenomenon Itinerant art movement awakened the civil society of the 19th century tsarist Russia, which along with other factors contributed to the increasing clashes of classes and, eventually, to the 1917 Revolution. Painting also underwent significant changes in terms of both form and content. The critical realism of the Itinerants gradually converted into the non-figurative Russian avant-garde. The realist method, which seems to be the exact opposite of abstraction, in fact, has much more in common with Suprematism, than we think. Despite his criticism of the new ‘Western’ art and its Russian followers, Ilya Repin had strong views on the formation of civil society and this contributed to the revolutionising of art and to the advent of the art of Kazimir Malevich.

In our artwork we would like, on the one hand, to metaphorically connect the two artistic movements, and on the other, to bring this situation to the point of absurd, which defines our world today. Repin used the natives of Shiryaevo village as models for his infamous painting Barge Haulers on the Volga. We would also like to invite the inhabitants of Shiryaevo (the descendants of Repin’s models) to become barge haulers and to drag a giant ‘black square’ along the village streets to the Repin Museum and to place it there as a symbol of all the hazy links in the history of Russian art. The ‘Kvadratushka’ (‘little square’) should be made out of wood approximately 3 x 3 x 1.5 m. A flat square becomes a parallelepiped; because of the perspective it acquires a three-dimensional form. Whereas the painterly realism transcends the boundaries of a picture plane and becomes the reality of Shiryaevo life. It is probable that Repin’s barge haulers were singing a Russian folk song Dubinushka (‘little oak tree’) while performing their heavy duty. During the realisation of this project we will find out how do modern barge haulers express their feelings?

Anyone who was born in the late Soviet Union undoubtedly remembers this very widespread slogan – “Lenin even now is more alive than the living – our strength, our knowledge, our weapon!” This very self-assured pronouncement disturbed no one, since it was a quite traditional “chant” for that time. Everyone knew that Lenin was lying in the mausoleum and no longer could affect anyone, while officials-bureaucrats yelled out that “chant” out of habit, as if chasing away unnecessary questions-demons, just so no one would push them off their cozy places. “You go and appeal to Lenin concerning that which he promised you in the communist future – that’s his responsibility. While we somehow, under the cover of Leninism, will keep our places”.

When the cover fell down the cockroaches ran away and Leninism came to an end on its own. Lenin remained in the mausoleum. But he too no longer is responsible for Leninism - there is no strength, no knowledge, no weapon, only eternal "now". The most interesting fact: you cannot remove the body, given the conception of this institution. If you remove it, another will have to be placed there. He is stuck between two worlds, like one accursed.

The same is true of monuments. They stand all across the former Soviet Union, with an outstretched arm call us towards communism, but Communism is already in the past. Either make a U-turn, or twist your head back and forth. In short, people are befuddled, they wander somewhere in the vicinity. Also, they have grown accustomed to the Ilych statues, take care of them, just in case. Without fail, the statues cannot be pulled down, they can only be replaced. When the replacement arrives, then the “now” will end as well.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

Anyone who was born in the late Soviet Union undoubtedly remembers this very widespread slogan – “Lenin even now is more alive than the living – our strength, our knowledge, our weapon!” This very self-assured pronouncement disturbed no one, since it was a quite traditional “chant” for that time. Everyone knew that Lenin was lying in the mausoleum and no longer could affect anyone, while officials-bureaucrats yelled out that “chant” out of habit, as if chasing away unnecessary questions-demons, just so no one would push them off their cozy places. “You go and appeal to Lenin concerning that which he promised you in the communist future – that’s his responsibility. While we somehow, under the cover of Leninism, will keep our places”.

When the cover fell down the cockroaches ran away and Leninism came to an end on its own. Lenin remained in the mausoleum. But he too no longer is responsible for Leninism - there is no strength, no knowledge, no weapon, only eternal "now". The most interesting fact: you cannot remove the body, given the conception of this institution. If you remove it, another will have to be placed there. He is stuck between two worlds, like one accursed.

The same is true of monuments. They stand all across the former Soviet Union, with an outstretched arm call us towards communism, but Communism is already in the past. Either make a U-turn, or twist your head back and forth. In short, people are befuddled, they wander somewhere in the vicinity. Also, they have grown accustomed to the Ilych statues, take care of them, just in case. Without fail, the statues cannot be pulled down, they can only be replaced. When the replacement arrives, then the “now” will end as well.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

Anyone who was born in the late Soviet Union undoubtedly remembers this very widespread slogan – “Lenin even now is more alive than the living – our strength, our knowledge, our weapon!” This very self-assured pronouncement disturbed no one, since it was a quite traditional “chant” for that time. Everyone knew that Lenin was lying in the mausoleum and no longer could affect anyone, while officials-bureaucrats yelled out that “chant” out of habit, as if chasing away unnecessary questions-demons, just so no one would push them off their cozy places. “You go and appeal to Lenin concerning that which he promised you in the communist future – that’s his responsibility. While we somehow, under the cover of Leninism, will keep our places”.

When the cover fell down the cockroaches ran away and Leninism came to an end on its own. Lenin remained in the mausoleum. But he too no longer is responsible for Leninism - there is no strength, no knowledge, no weapon, only eternal "now". The most interesting fact: you cannot remove the body, given the conception of this institution. If you remove it, another will have to be placed there. He is stuck between two worlds, like one accursed.

The same is true of monuments. They stand all across the former Soviet Union, with an outstretched arm call us towards communism, but Communism is already in the past. Either make a U-turn, or twist your head back and forth. In short, people are befuddled, they wander somewhere in the vicinity. Also, they have grown accustomed to the Ilych statues, take care of them, just in case. Without fail, the statues cannot be pulled down, they can only be replaced. When the replacement arrives, then the “now” will end as well.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

Anyone who was born in the late Soviet Union undoubtedly remembers this very widespread slogan – “Lenin even now is more alive than the living – our strength, our knowledge, our weapon!” This very self-assured pronouncement disturbed no one, since it was a quite traditional “chant” for that time. Everyone knew that Lenin was lying in the mausoleum and no longer could affect anyone, while officials-bureaucrats yelled out that “chant” out of habit, as if chasing away unnecessary questions-demons, just so no one would push them off their cozy places. “You go and appeal to Lenin concerning that which he promised you in the communist future – that’s his responsibility. While we somehow, under the cover of Leninism, will keep our places”.

When the cover fell down the cockroaches ran away and Leninism came to an end on its own. Lenin remained in the mausoleum. But he too no longer is responsible for Leninism - there is no strength, no knowledge, no weapon, only eternal "now". The most interesting fact: you cannot remove the body, given the conception of this institution. If you remove it, another will have to be placed there. He is stuck between two worlds, like one accursed.

The same is true of monuments. They stand all across the former Soviet Union, with an outstretched arm call us towards communism, but Communism is already in the past. Either make a U-turn, or twist your head back and forth. In short, people are befuddled, they wander somewhere in the vicinity. Also, they have grown accustomed to the Ilych statues, take care of them, just in case. Without fail, the statues cannot be pulled down, they can only be replaced. When the replacement arrives, then the “now” will end as well.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

When Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's body was already resting in the Mausoleum and he no longer could influence events, Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) were renamed after him. Granted, these are the highest points of the Moscow region, but what kind of mountains are these, they are hills. It is shameful to name these "sparrow" elevations in honour of the leader of the world proletariat. One must take normal heights.

As Lenin's thought, reinforced by Red Army units, spread out across the territory of the Russian Empire, such heights became more numerous. The envoys of the Communist leader penetrated hihger and higher, until they conquered the spurs of Pamir, Tian Shan, and Trans-Ili Alatau. When these "alpinist" made themselves secure on the conquered heights, they started to create tags - in one place they named a peak in honour of Lenin, in another they put up a monument. See, it would be implied, Marxist-Leninist ideas permeate this region, we have fulfilled the party's plans. The local people could do nothing. Lenin, well, let it be Lenin. One must believe in someone. There was no God, they were told, and the shamans had been prohibited. Only Lenin was allowed - go and worship him. The people learned to put together by themselves their own objects of propaganda - shrines - temples.

There came a time when Lenin's thought quietly receded from mountain peaks into the depths of capitalism, laying bare the artifacts it left behind. Here and there stand the. ruins of a former civilisation. From the point of view of an archeologist, does it matter whether one studies, on the basis of remains, Hellenistic culture in the shape of the Temple of Garni, abandoned in the mountains of Armenia, or Communist culture in the form of a rusted decorator's stele in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

When Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's body was already resting in the Mausoleum and he no longer could influence events, Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) were renamed after him. Granted, these are the highest points of the Moscow region, but what kind of mountains are these, they are hills. It is shameful to name these "sparrow" elevations in honour of the leader of the world proletariat. One must take normal heights.

As Lenin's thought, reinforced by Red Army units, spread out across the territory of the Russian Empire, such heights became more numerous. The envoys of the Communist leader penetrated hihger and higher, until they conquered the spurs of Pamir, Tian Shan, and Trans-Ili Alatau. When these "alpinist" made themselves secure on the conquered heights, they started to create tags - in one place they named a peak in honour of Lenin, in another they put up a monument. See, it would be implied, Marxist-Leninist ideas permeate this region, we have fulfilled the party's plans. The local people could do nothing. Lenin, well, let it be Lenin. One must believe in someone. There was no God, they were told, and the shamans had been prohibited. Only Lenin was allowed - go and worship him. The people learned to put together by themselves their own objects of propaganda - shrines - temples.

There came a time when Lenin's thought quietly receded from mountain peaks into the depths of capitalism, laying bare the artifacts it left behind. Here and there stand the. ruins of a former civilisation. From the point of view of an archeologist, does it matter whether one studies, on the basis of remains, Hellenistic culture in the shape of the Temple of Garni, abandoned in the mountains of Armenia, or Communist culture in the form of a rusted decorator's stele in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

When Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's body was already resting in the Mausoleum and he no longer could influence events, Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) were renamed after him. Granted, these are the highest points of the Moscow region, but what kind of mountains are these, they are hills. It is shameful to name these "sparrow" elevations in honour of the leader of the world proletariat. One must take normal heights.

As Lenin's thought, reinforced by Red Army units, spread out across the territory of the Russian Empire, such heights became more numerous. The envoys of the Communist leader penetrated hihger and higher, until they conquered the spurs of Pamir, Tian Shan, and Trans-Ili Alatau. When these "alpinist" made themselves secure on the conquered heights, they started to create tags - in one place they named a peak in honour of Lenin, in another they put up a monument. See, it would be implied, Marxist-Leninist ideas permeate this region, we have fulfilled the party's plans. The local people could do nothing. Lenin, well, let it be Lenin. One must believe in someone. There was no God, they were told, and the shamans had been prohibited. Only Lenin was allowed - go and worship him. The people learned to put together by themselves their own objects of propaganda - shrines - temples.

There came a time when Lenin's thought quietly receded from mountain peaks into the depths of capitalism, laying bare the artifacts it left behind. Here and there stand the. ruins of a former civilisation. From the point of view of an archeologist, does it matter whether one studies, on the basis of remains, Hellenistic culture in the shape of the Temple of Garni, abandoned in the mountains of Armenia, or Communist culture in the form of a rusted decorator's stele in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

Yelena Vorobyeva, 2015

This work of ours can be seen as a hymn to gender diversity. But there is another important topic in our area.

The letters of the Cyrillic alphabet M and F are not just letters, but symbols of a latrine that are ingrained in the brain of every average citizen. And now, when post-Soviet Asia says "goodbye" to the Cyrillic alphabet and happily switches to the Latin alphabet, you sadly think what will happen to already dear M and F in the places of "need".

The ruins of a uranium processing plant, located in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Once upon a time it was a strategic object, but now, it is more likely an archaeological site of the Soviet era. At the edge of the cliff, a kind of "Erechtheion" - toilet for plant workers with classic M and F from ceramic tiles. We just have to finish writing the alphabet, so that we can fully designate the outgoing era.

This work of ours can be seen as a hymn to gender diversity. But there is another important topic in our area.

The letters of the Cyrillic alphabet M and F are not just letters, but symbols of a latrine that are ingrained in the brain of every average citizen. And now, when post-Soviet Asia says "goodbye" to the Cyrillic alphabet and happily switches to the Latin alphabet, you sadly think what will happen to already dear M and F in the places of "need".

The ruins of a uranium processing plant, located in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Once upon a time it was a strategic object, but now, it is more likely an archaeological site of the Soviet era. At the edge of the cliff, a kind of "Erechtheion" - toilet for plant workers with classic M and F from ceramic tiles. We just have to finish writing the alphabet, so that we can fully designate the outgoing era.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

A series of graphic sheets and embroideries "Vintage" is a kind of continuation of the fanous "The Artist is Asleep" presented at the Venice Biennale. The name of the project, "Vintage" is a play on words of the slang meaning of this word: dispersing of protesters by the police (from the verb "screw"). Artists used photographs of similar incidents found on the Internet; at the same time, the Vorobyevs seem to wrap the figures of people who are “screwed” by the police into a pink blanket from the first version of their installation. This time, the imaginary artist is awakened, sent outside with a blanket, and "screwed" up there by the police.

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018

If we talk about the visual landscape of modern Kazakhstan, one cannot ignore politically justified architectural landmark. One of the first in this characteristic row is the architectural ensemble (or object) with the self-explanatory name "Park of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan". Opened in 2010 in Almaty, it best shows the taste preferences of the ruling elite.

The park is dedicated to the first person, the President of Kazakhstan (his name is not called to give more sacredness to this place), whose youth coincided with the years of Stalin's rule. We can say that Soviet cinema, songs, the architectural style of the 50s are still a model of sublimity and beauty for the officials of the old guard and latently, this sample is implemented in various architectural fantasies. Thus, the buildings built in the 21st century imitate the pseudo-classical style beloved by autocrats (in turn, imitating the monumental classics of Ancient Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance) and involuntarily return us back to the past and before last. We end up with an imitation of imitation. The first thing that comes to mind is the association with Bernini's colonnade. Only the eternal materials of the Eternal City have been replaced with plastic, plywood, and concrete castings. A mixture of ancient Greek and Asian ingredients creates a pretentious kitsch eclecticism. It feels like if the ancients "cared"; about their ruins, then ours are, as it were, careless in thinking about the future, if "temporary" structures are the backbone of all this pathos. After all, the Acropolis or the Colosseum are majestic and beautiful and in a "ruined" form. Nature, which, a priori, is stronger than any culture or politics, absorbing what was done once, leaves fragments, stubs in memory of past civilizations. Our "civilization" in such an embodiment will apparently be digested without a trace.

In our project, we use photographs as documentary material. Each photo has a corresponding drawing in the style of architectural sketches of the 50s. The drawing is the main component, the real photograph is just a reflection of the sketch. The past is more important here than the present, the present is a reflection of the past. If the architectural exhibition in Tselinny talks about the architecture of Soviet modernism in Almaty, then our work picks up this thread and continues the conversation about the architecture of "post-Soviet postmodernism" or, most likely, about the architecture of the post-Soviet archaic.

Elena Vorobyeva, 2018