The Naked Room presents a solo exhibition by the artist Kinder Album entitled Magic is All Around. Ceramic and wooden objects, tapestries and new graphics that have already become viral are assembled live as a holistic statement of the artist and a small retrospective of her work with craft techniques of recent years.
In her practice, Kinder Album subverts corporeality, femininity and related stereotypes, personal fantasies and her own experience, and superimposes it all on a social agency. "I would laugh to keep from crying," a line by Lesya Ukrainka asks as an epilogue to the exhibition. In her works, Kinder Album creates a magical space for the viewer—and for herself—to reboot from everyday tragedies. Humour and seriousness, the real and the imaginary exist in parallel, like in a magician's show.
This magic manifests itself already in the process of creating works. Kinder Album interacts with different media and often witnesses the metamorphosis of materials that she cannot control. Thus, red glaze turns ceramics blue when fired—a phenomenon that is easily explained by chemists, but fascinates the artist's imagination. She becomes a magician herself. The creation of a tapestry from combed dog hair is a vivid example of rethinking the usual, which Kinder Album resorts to.
"Kinder Album is one of the most witty, sincere and ruthlessly accurate in its observations Ukrainian artists. She symbolically and literally exposes uncomfortable topics that have been pushed out of public discussion. And equally boldly, mocks the problems of gender stereotypes, objectified sexuality, and domestic violence, which are devalued by social silence. The conflict between the provocative images and the "childish language" of their artistic embodiment returns the gaze to where our intellectual chastity tries to take it away from. Unable to do it alone, we find ourselves "naked and funny", like the clumsy men in the legendary comic book drawings.
The Great War added a new depth to Kinder Album's practice. Her method has not changed. But the arsenal of subjects and artistic techniques has expanded significantly. Paradoxically, the practice of recent years seems to be more mature the more simple and playful forms her works from basic materials—clay, wood, thread—take. However, the apparent levity of her works only sharpens the perception of everyday life. The artist does not take her and our eyes off the complex and traumatic. Instead, she offers other forms for understanding the experience of war and refuge, fear and longing, death and the desire to live in spite of everything. When the inevitable fatigue of documentary naturalism sets in, it is an outright parody that gives us the necessary shake-up, preventing us from becoming blurred. After all, carnival and farce have gone hand in hand with catastrophes throughout human history."
Maria Lanko and Lizaveta German
