On July 18 and 19, a new “Series” appeared on Instagram by the artist Katia Khassine.
Katya Khasina is an artist who works mainly with text, illustrations, and graphics, whose practice addresses problems of the representation of knowledge and power of translation. For the Cosmoscow Foundation's "Serials” program, Katia Khassine suggests thinking about the nature of still lifes in a short essay "Zedra" ("Zest"), consisting of nine chapters and illustrated with images found during the excavation of fragments that could be models for still lifes. Black-and- white graphic miniatures drawn with an pen-liner are combined by the artist with visual codes of archaeological sketches.
Artist's comment:
«Series split the film into episodes to show the diversity of the world, to reflect it entirely (and to strip it of its monumental power); the series split the work. This split has changed us; our gaze, wrapped in the past, now "recognizes" the then-not-happened split. Viewed between seasons, the film holds back the concentrated energy of the series; it is an object that in our eyes longs to be a series but is bolt in the work. In the “Zedra” ("Zest") project, I do an assumption exercise: unravel the node of a long-ago created object, and look at the series woven into it (or entwined with it later).
How to unravel a still life (or, more broadly, the tradition of classic European still life)? I see several movements: the first-a tilt to the conflict of the composition consisting of symbols, the second-to the idea of" dead nature " (still life stops the lives of individual objects), in the third movement, still lifes become monuments of everyday life and documents for research of a bygone everyday life, the fourth — a circular step" emancipation-suppression of the decorative", and the fifth — a slowdown in which the oppression is transparent.
Each episode (each movement) is accompanied by an image of the "find" — the trace and remains of an object once included in the classic still life (this is a sequel to pictures, this is a sequel to decay). The fragmentary nature of the images is duplicated by the fragmentary nature of the text: notes surrounding the graphics, numbered and partially torn apart, are grouped into thematic blocks associated with objects.» The full version of "Zedra" ("Zest") you can find on Instagram. Katia Khassine (born 1996, Moscow) — artist, graduated from the Institute of the Contemporary Art (2018), participated in the Laboratory of Art Critics (2019). Selected projects: "Hairless multiplies boredom, C- dead mother of pearl, hollow riddle" (ISSMAG gallery, Moscow, 2020), event series "Five reports on scaliness" ([...]Labs, CTI Fabrika, Moscow, 2018). Participant of exhibitions "Aesthetic Extensions" (non-profit program Vienna Contemporary, 2018), "Myths and legends of everyday life" (New Wing of the Gogol House, 2018), "Yudoli" (Triumph gallery, 2017), "Attic. Sessions of phantom communication" (Ilya Kabakov's workshop, 2017), etc. Lives and works in Moscow.