SASHAPASHA
Fragile Narratives
29.04.-22.05.
The tragic outbreak of the war started by the Russian invasion of Ukraine is changing dramatically our attitude towards memory. The principles of how we used to work with traumatic memories of the past will never be the same again. Every museum exhibition related to previous wars has to be reconstructed from a new standpoint and perspective where the memories of WWII become related to the present more than to the past. The Fragile Narratives exhibition by SASHAPASHA works with memories on different levels. While Sasha’s objects and embroideries are dealing with her own memories, Pavel’s works are based on the memoirs of his grandparents, but what is common to both is the memories from childhood.
Sasha’s mother has kept the drawings that Sasha made as a child. Mostly these were done in kindergarten. Sasha’s name is written in the teacher’s hand on the reverse side and the first letter of the surname is followed by a full stop.
At what point do adults lose the ability to create in the same way as children do? Not being afraid of making mistakes, depicting a circle with jagged edges, changing proportions and animating objects. The shining sun is smiling. Why don’t adults want to draw a smile on the sun? As a child, in order to learn something, one had to repeat it many times. Squiggles in notebooks, numbers, letters, drawings. In Sasha’s art she has fallen in love with routine; the ritual of repetition, the process of performing the same simple action until it reaches perfection. She folds the postcards one after another to make a curtain. Opening the curtain one can enter her childhood world where she is an artist and a demiurge.
Pavel’s works presented in the exhibition jump over a generation creating a bridge between his childhood and the childhood memories of his grandparents – children of war. The objects are first of all the metaphors. The wooden pencil case of his grandfather’s, who travelled from Russia to Finland to spend the wartime here. Wicker baskets, made by his maternal grandfather during WWII on the Belomorkanal. Soviet lollipop moulds that were used by his grandmother’s Ingrian family to survive through the winter during their evacuation in Sverdlovsk.
The Fragile Narratives exhibition aims to create a bridge whose foundations are based on the concept of memory as a continuous flow. The ongoing war had shown us that history is not a progression from wars and conflicts to humanity and peace. History is a loop of traumatic memories and the only safe space we have is the fragile narratives of our own micro-histories
The Fragile Narratives project is supported by The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).
