Teplushka

Teplushka, multimedia project, 2019 My project consists of a book with photographs and drawings about what to do when your world is inexplicably turned upside down, when white becomes black and perhaps form loses its original content. This is a journey into a dark forest: a soldier’s dream in a trench, a diary of existential survival and a chronicle of the fight against absurdity. I live in Siberia, and my project combines the terrible camp past of this region with a disturbing present. There must be a refuge somewhere in the midst of it all.

The project is called “Teplushka”; in Russian it means a ‘heated freight van’. People (mainly soldiers and prisoners) but livestock also were transported this way in Soviet times. Teplushka is a simple house, a primary shelter, while at the same time symbolizing the State`s repression of its own citizens.

This book is constructed using a French type of bookbinding. Some of the drawings are hidden inside the folds and to view them you will need to cut the pages. By committing this act you are symbolically releasing the hidden meanings of this art-book.

In addition to the theme of the “inversion” of optics during a catastrophe, the project represent of the absurdity of a totalitarian system, and war as the main manifestation of such a system, as well as the theme of death, the theme of wandering in the unknown, hence the motif of the forest, and the theme of hope and self-preservation. I made some of the drawings from the project as engravings.

Dry point and colored pencil. Edition 1/10

When I thought the project was close to completion, I painted a mural in an abandoned military barracks based on my drawings. The mural became part of the project, it contains an emphasis on the anti-war side project. The absurdity of the war is emphasized by the documents of the barracks itself, half-rotten military boots and scratghed texts from 80-90s on the walls glorifying demobilization.

Initially, I wanted to make a book presentation in this place. But since this is a crumbling building with a burnt ceiling, for safety reasons I decided to cancel the big presentation. The barracks could be visited as a city tourist.
Acrilyk on walls, Novosibirsk, Russia, 2019

Exhibition in Novosibirsk, Fab 8 gallery. The central part of the exhibition was the curtain made of fabric with a painting depicting a parachutist mending a parachute in the forest. The picture was complemented by a helicopter tail.

A parachutist falling into an unknown area is the central image of the project, a symbol of the unpredictability of life, and getting into difficult circumstances from which a way out must be found.

Exhibition in the Tomsk gallery “Locus” 2021.
Drawing with chalk and pastel on the black wall of the gallery. 3.2×7.6 m., on top of the drawing are pasted photographs from the project without frames of different sizes, the painting was illuminated from both sides with red light.

Teplushka photobook (art-book) 2019

21×14 cm 88 pages in cut form Paper 150 gr.
Printing — digital offset
Binding — hand-sewn, Japanese style.
Cover — cardboard.
Dust jacket made of natural felt with a slit. The book comes with a blade on a string. Contents: Photos, drawings, texts. There have been three print runs so far 2019, 2020 with a total of 105 copies.