Tatiana Fiodorova: "Art can change the society in order to
make it more prepared to show that we have rights we must defend"
What was your motivation to become an artist?
I didn't
want to become an artist I just followed some flows. My father was an artist
too but he died very early when I was 6 years old and when I grow up I had no
idea that I wanted to do that. When I finished the school I decided to become a
fashion designer and started to study in Transnistria
in Tiraspol College. After when I finished study I understood that my
drawing skills weren't enough at all to do it. Then I decided to go to
University of Chisinau and study graphic design and in
the same time to continue to be the fashion designer and I have
participated in several fashion festivals in
Ukraine, Russia... to show some art collections but in the post-soviet public spaces, you need
money to promote fashion. I'm tired of it
because there was no money. I had all the time to
spend money on sewing new
collections. All collections I
sewed myself with
my hands. Also during my study at the university I start to be active as artist to
exhibited art works in Chisinau at the gallery Brancusi. Then appeared cheap internet access and I became acquainted with contemporary art, began
to work in a more conceptual way..
Now
I'm pleased I found my way.When you are an artist
you have a different vision and you have to express yourself. And in order to create a
work you do not need a lot of money, unlike the fashion design.
And I like to be an artist.
How was your first project?
My father
was an artist during the soviet ages, He was unknown
artist and never exhibited somewhere. He was also designer and photographer, and we were
born the same day. He left a lot of interesting things, in addition to
photographs, paintings, drawings: a homemade box of Cyrillic Russian letters, a
book- a photocopy of Soviet publications on medicinal plants, stencils,
sketches for the Soviet-era propaganda posters, and more. Moreover, he was an
archivist and collector, gathering postcards and stamps, purely for pragmatic
purposes, as he worked as a designer and decorator.
I decided to show his creativity
through
my memory of him and soviet time.. It was
in 2004.
Two
years ago in 2012 I did also a artist’s book with his painting, photos and
draws. As I said he
also was an amateur photographer and I remember very strongly his red darkroom bathroom where he used to process photos. It's
interesting that trough my artistic life every time in different period appears
the same topic but in different way.
Do you think that the
figure of the artist is a sort of inheritance or an artist can learn how to be
an artist?
I grew up as
a normal person not as an artist at all. I discovered art just when I was at the
University. I began to understand all my father's objects and activities when I
studied art, until this moment this compilation was just images to me. Since
then I started to contact with his creativity and I started to understand it...
What is the work that you feel most proud
about?
Maybe is
the book about my father’s project. For me it was important to do this in memory of him .. I tried to speak about how was in
general the life of a soviet artist... he was an unknown artist and in that
period was not very easy to be an artist. If you were not member of the Union
of Artist, you couldn’t show your project to the public. I compared my
situation thinking about what kind of freedom had my father and what freedom I
have now. Now you can present almost everywhere. Therefore, the topic was: how
the artist has social attitude with the state and the society, what kind of
freedom he had?
Speak more about your book in
details?
In soviet
times everything was about propaganda, no freedom of expression at all.
So, in this book I tried to ask “how easy was
to be in the Union of artists?” “What kind of topic you must to speak about?”
I did an
interview with a member of the Union of Artist, Victor Kuzmenko, who explained
me a lot of interesting details about how they worked in the soviet times and
how was the real situation. For me was really interesting to see the personal
opinion of the artist and face it to the state rules.
Also in the
book you can see original material, artefacts of the soviet time: soviet
banknote, paper of calendar. . You can see in the book how it looked public
designed, and for me is amazing because not a lot of people can speak about
this topic: and also some pictures taken during 70-80’s, so you can observe how
the people looked during those ages. My father also used to go to the villages
and selling photos, for example taking pictures of people there, different kind
of people, for example you can see the collection of women with babies. The
last part of the book is the personal pictures from my family’s
archive: me, my sister, my mother and father.
You use different artistic formats such as
photography, video, performance, etc. What each one of them means to you? How
do you choose between them each time?
It depends on
the message you want to share. You have a message and you have to choose which
media is better. For example, I did my first performance in 2009, I've never done
anything like this before and I guess you have to choose the best format for
your message, the satisfactory one. Also, sometimes you feel that some formats are
not enough for your message. For example it is happened with the book about my
father... I felt that an exhibition wasn't enough to show his creativity. The book was a format in which everything
important could be contained. Very interesting experience to create book as art object by my hands.Photography as other
medium I like very much because it is allows me to distance my selves
from reality and be an observer.
You also focus on
ordinary life and everyday objects. What do you think about the relationship
between ordinary life and routine and art?
I cannot separate my life from my art. I think
that my artistic feeling influences my whole life. It's not a process like
this: right now I'm a normal person; now I'm an artist... there are so many
intersections between the two aspects. Also when I'm having my 'normal routine'
I keep on seeing interesting things in an artistic manner.
Soviet passport project, by Tatiana Fiodorova
In your opinion, what
is the political role of the art? Especially referred to nowadays Moldovan
situation…
I cannot change politics’ way of acting or
thinking, I don't have the possibility to speak with them but maybe I can
change everyday audience attitude, because they can come to my exhibition and
they can see something different. And also about the protest I report in my
work, which could be a chance for changing something with art. I think that art
can change something but I don't know if it's possible in our context. I think
art cannot change polity, but it can change somehow the society in order to
make it more prepared to show that we have rights we must defend, to show that
we could have a better life.
How do you feel about
art situation in Moldova? Do you think that art is a matter of education?
It's not really strong if we speak about art
education and infrastructure.
We have three levels in art educational
system which was shaped during soviet times; so the system is still
traditional, nobody will teach you about new practice and media. Sometimes carried out workshops on various practices of
contemporary art, but this is not
enough to change the whole
situation. General the art is still living in the past; we don’t have a lot of
contemporary referents in Moldova. As I said, contemporary art is not popular in
Moldova, so the contemporary artist are not so well known . Also, many Moldovan
artists immigrated to other countries. in my opinion, Moldova is almost
in the same situation as the most part of the countries from the former Soviet
space, not including perhaps Russia (namely in Moscow): lack of an
infrastructure for contemporary art, no art galleries, museums, no quality art
schooling, no institutions to educate valuable artists, curators, and critics
of contemporary art.
In Moldova, there is no art market and there is
no demand for contemporary art. This fact can be considered as a positive
feature, since it is not commercialized and art exists in its pure form.
However, for Moldavian artist it is very
difficult to live and create in spite of this whole system. After 20 years, the
Moldovan contemporary art is still marginal, and the Moldovan society has few
acquaintance of its existence. The artistes found themselves in the absence of
the art scene, so they started talking about themselves in the West than at
home, and also other artists moved to the West because of economic instability
in the our country. Despite the fact that today the artist finds it hard to
survive in such conditions, the Moldavian contemporary art exists. That I can
say for sure.
Do you have some
influences in your creative process?
It is really
difficult to find person or artist. So many people. For example, Marina
Abramovic. “I made performance the world is dirty, The artist must be dirty”. as
a replica of the performance by the artist Marina Abramović , «The art is
beautiful, the artist must be beautiful». The performance took place in the
month of July in the gallery Karlin Studios, in Prague in 2012 . In this
performance I was swimming in the dirt, rubbing myself with mud, to rethink the
role of the artist in contemporary society. Today the artist does not create a
high aesthetic value in terms of beauty, and the task of the artist is to be in
the middle of political and social events. Thus, the artist bathing in public
and political mud becomes an instrument of reproof and exposer of problems that
plague society.Most of all I am biased environment
in which I live, the political and
social situation in the country. Pyotr Pavlensky is coming to my mind right now, because the cut off the
ear yesterday to protest; I rather prefer to make performance dealing with my feelings inside. I
don't like to be so provocative; otherwise it is more activism than artistic
expression. But I don't think that they're two opposite terms, it's just
different opinions or conceptions and different possibility of expressions for
example Pussy Riots, for me a performance it's more therapeutic, in connection with
my internal relationship with different topic and sometimes I don't want to
show too much... it's more an internal process.
- What are your projects for the future?
I'm making a new book called Red Star; it's
about a soviet factory. This is a story about my mother and soviet times... she
was working in a factory during soviet times, but when the system broke down
also the factory was in bankrupt and many people were thrown out. And in this
factory there were more woman than men... so, the work focuses on how women
manage to survive during soviet times. Before she lost her job, she bought a
lot of stuff from this factory, thinking that in the future maybe it will be
useful, maybe its price will increase...In that factory they produced mostly dresses and women clothes, the factory place is
nowadays abandoned, so I took some pictures putting the clothes in the park, in soviet time it was called “ Lenin”. Now it is
like forest with wild dogs. Now it is
dangerous to go there alone.
This project will be showed in November in one
feminist project in Minsk, Belarus. It is international exhibition but more focus to the
post-soviet countries.
Red Start Project, by Tatiana Fiodorova
Do you have some
advice for the future artist?
The most important is to think about yourself,
who you are... to watch around you and express your feelings and thoughts. For me, a contemporary artist
is primarily a person creates and forming new ideas and thoughts reworking his experience and his understanding of the world. After a deep reflex ion you can do
whatever you want.
Interview by:
Ruben Pulido and Francesco Brusa
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