Paris Internationale 2024

Sveta Mordovskaya

Sveta Mordovskaya’s presentation for Paris Internationale presents photographs and two sculptures. The photographs, taken from her teenage and childhood in Siberia, are nailed and taped to the wall with adornments like frames and other mixed-media assemblages. However, this work is not made as autobiography. Blown-up larger than their original size, the photographs become bigger than life, resisting classification as a mere photograph, readymade, collage, or sculpture. The content of the photographs appear straightforward, but remain uneasy for public consumption: snapshots of the teenage artist amongst teammates and friends, and the artist posing for the camera, almost knowing her photograph’s future purpose. Here, the teenage Mordovskaya is in a state of playful flux, but she is not yet ‘the artist.’ It’s as though Mordovskaya has given her young self an exhibition. In all of Mordovskaya’s work, appropriated and discarded media hold potential for material animacy. The works and their collaged elements are treated the same, wherein Mordovskaya uses her past as raw material. Disconnected from the memories of her youth, these images carry the potential for aesthetic growth and transformation.

Kunstkritikk