Installation: 1-channel video, color with sound, 06:59‘; wall text (projection);
sound piece, 11:20‘; black and white portraits (16.5 x 9 cm), variable quantity;
Cloth (grey), 2022
The installation director [A.Shakhmaliyeva] is an archeology of one person, a careful re-creation of the past, an embodied memory. The artistic research deals with the hitherto unexplored Soviet female filmmaker Ayan Shakhmaliyeva who made 16 films between 1957 and 1992 in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Series of portraits, a projection with a text, a video consisting of archive photos, a sound piece, and a fabric resembling a red carpet open up a space in which historical fate becomes graspable. Short conversations (often via Facebook) expose the search process as an element of the work itself. A series of black and white portraits as an endless loop shows the young filmmaker as an actress in her first film after graduation. Her voice and the music that was written for her films are brought together in a sound piece that as a soundtrack accompanies the elements of the installation. The search for memories and facts becomes a journey into the past of the work of the film studio Lenfilm. Shakhmaliyeva’s profession as a director was inextricably intertwined with her life. Both tragically ended with the collapse of the studio and the whole country. The installation director [A.Shakhmaliyeva] is a deconstructed film, a series of photographic images that intertwine into a fleeting, melancholic portrait.
The work was shown:
2022 Festsaal, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Tender Hooks – Goldrausch 2022, Kommunale Galerie Berlin (first version)
Installation: 1-channel video, color with sound, 06:59‘; wall text (projection);
sound piece, 11:20‘; black and white portraits (16.5 x 9 cm), variable quantity;
Cloth (grey), 2022
The installation director [A.Shakhmaliyeva] is an archeology of one person, a careful re-creation of the past, an embodied memory. The artistic research deals with the hitherto unexplored Soviet female filmmaker Ayan Shakhmaliyeva who made 16 films between 1957 and 1992 in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Series of portraits, a projection with a text, a video consisting of archive photos, a sound piece, and a fabric resembling a red carpet open up a space in which historical fate becomes graspable. Short conversations (often via Facebook) expose the search process as an element of the work itself. A series of black and white portraits as an endless loop shows the young filmmaker as an actress in her first film after graduation. Her voice and the music that was written for her films are brought together in a sound piece that as a soundtrack accompanies the elements of the installation. The search for memories and facts becomes a journey into the past of the work of the film studio Lenfilm. Shakhmaliyeva’s profession as a director was inextricably intertwined with her life. Both tragically ended with the collapse of the studio and the whole country. The installation director [A.Shakhmaliyeva] is a deconstructed film, a series of photographic images that intertwine into a fleeting, melancholic portrait.
The work was shown:
2022 Festsaal, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
Tender Hooks – Goldrausch 2022, Kommunale Galerie Berlin (first version)