The performance-installation “Limited Monarchy” is an experience research of “double separation”, the task is to find oneself in the human reality constructed by the positions: a social role – a body – consciousness. The artist calls this experience “Museumification of human shells”.
The social position is represented by the royal dress of Weld Queen, created specially for the performance “Monarchy”. This costume is intended to symbolically give its owner a “royal status”. Ridding the body from the represented image, the artist realizes the right to their separate and independent existence from each other. Including the existence of Weld Queen image inside the museum space, which turns any exhibit presented in it into an object of historical value. The separation from social self-determination is the act of exposure which becomes the first stage of alienation.
The second stage of alienation (performative) means the removal from physical factuality and exit to the transcendental sensation of inner self. The artist’s body is intentionally turned into an object of external observation, becoming an independent entity, a peculiar exhibit separated from consciousness and which is broken off with subjective self-identification. The motionless pose for several hours enhances the effect of the absence and internal non-availability.
By her performance the artist projects the central idea of her creativity is the researching of human nature, the dichotomy of the spiritual and physical. The awareness of pure identity which does not depend on external shells (the gender, the age, the profession, the social status, etc.) can be actually perceived and achieved in “extreme situations” activating the mechanisms of “separation” and the transition of self-awareness to a new quality.
January 28, 2019
All-Russian Decorative Art Museum.
Moscow
