THERE WILL BE SIGNS, 2024

10.09 - 29.09, maslá lissé, Moscow

Artists: Maria Abdullaeva, Katya Antoshkina, Katya Vlasova, Vera Tarasova
Curators: Liza Voronina
Photo documentation: Slava Nesterov
The exhibition is supported by the “Sphera” Foundation

There will be signs - part of a phrase that went viral on social media. The whole phrase is: ‘If I win the lottery, I won't tell anyone. But there will be signs.’ Signs are units of communication, subtle deviations from the usual routine, which become evidence of large — scale changes: something has already happened, but has remained without our attention. Only the consequences of an invisible phenomenon make it possible to reconstruct it. For the participants of the project There will be signs, such an invisible but omnipresent phenomenon is the unrecognisable about others, non-human beings.

Their presence is undeniable, but the very fact of their discovery becomes a differentiating moment: as long as we do not talk about nature, do not see it, do not go out to look for it specifically, it seems to exist everywhere. When we give it a name — we turn it into a scenery, again leaving some part of it in the space of the undetectable and undetectable. Only small clues appear on the surface: traces of unknown creatures and unexplained phenomena, which the artists record.

For example, Katya Antoshkina pushes the boundaries of the pictorial plane to a full-fledged stage entourage, immersing the viewer in the space of transcendental motifs. In response to the detached contemplation, Katya Vlasova draws the boundary with the ‘undisclosed’ with the help of stereophotography — a close look at the moving image only increases doubts whether one can trust one's own eyes. Traces of the presence of the unidentified are intensified by the sound accompaniment worked on by Maria Abdullaeva and Vera Tarasova - from field recordings, the artists gather the space of the inaccessible, where each familiar detail takes the viewer deeper into the unknown. — Lisa Voronina

‘Fairy’ is a musical composition made of field sounds as well as sounds found on the Internet: thunderclaps, the flow of streams, fairy laughter, diamonds sparkling in underground hiding places, cries for help, and so on. In the work, I turned to the sonnet form: two themes, declaring themselves, meet and merge. The resulting sound was run through homemade analogue synthesizers: a cracklebox and a static detector. Their noises and distortions, as well as the shape of the piece, convey the boundary condition of the conventional natural environment. In addition, the sound is distorted indirectly because the signal sources are in an isolated room. Interference altering spaces and the viewer's affect. — Maria Abdullaeva