THE NAKED ROOM @LISTE

The complex practice of Anna Zvyagintseva is focused on topics such as bodilyexperience(s), fragility, femininity, labour, and identity. Having her intimate reflections and observations as a primary source, she constantly rethinks her method and gets herself immersed in new themes and means of its materialisation. Her method can be loosely described as an ongoing search for a form for subtle and invisible things and feelings through means of art. Yet, in the case of Anna’s practice, “invisible” does not mean “insignificant”. Furthermore, her works on paper, paintings, sculptures of various materials, shapes and scale, her film, photography and textile pieces reveal,—with an equal power— the beauty of mundanity in all its diversity precisely through attention to unobtrusive, inconspicuous, peripheral.

The practice of drawing has long remained a conceptual core of Anna’s work. Many of her works, including three-dimensional objects, started from reflections on the essence of a line: either produced by a hand and will of an artist, or observed in an outer world. The nature of Anna’s own drawings goes against the stereotypes about academic mastership, viewed as a standard of “quality”, especially in the environment of Kyiv Art Academy where Anna got her first professional training. Instead, her sketches show Anna’s genuine attraction to documented episodes, her closeness to everyday life, which is filled with the meaning of the world of heroines. This approach demonstrates another aspect of the invisible work — the aspect of an artist’s work that cannot be measured in clear socio-economic measures but plays an important role as a sensitive indicator of social processes.

In her most recent works, created after the russian invasion, Zvyagintseva kept working with the same deliberately fragile and elusive forms and imagery. Yet, her statements have become much firmer, merciless and explicit when it comes to commenting on the ongoing war and violence in her homeland.