About February in sobs...
Solo exhibition
Triumph Gallery, Moscow, 2024
curator Polina Mogilina
The title of the new exhibition by Eva Helki refers to the famous verse from Boris Pasternak’s poem: ‘February, / Get ink, shed tears!..’ Originally written in 1912, the poet reworked the poem multiple times. This piece exemplifies the marvellous poetic genius of Pasternak. Impactful and ingenious metaphorical images that describe the awakening of nature are used by the poet to express the mysterious workings of how a bout of inspiration rises from deep within and to unveil the inner life of thought and creativity. Eva Helki’s new project centres around her contemplations on the nature of memory. A carefully stored and constantly updated collection of memories is a unique and integral dimension in the essence of each of us. It can transplant you back into the moments that left knots of remembrance on the thread of life, make you feel and experience anew your deepest emotions, let you hide from the present and the future.
The exhibition features three series of works, where each addresses the concepts of remembering and memories from a different angle. In her series of panel paintings, Eva Helki depicts signature cityscapes of recognisable locations in Saint Petersburg. Seemingly unremarkable and mundane, the very fact of such heightened attention to them might appear questionable. Whereas in fact all these places are extremely important for the artist. Her memories are bound to these coordinates, imprinted on the medium of her memory with strong images. In putting them into paintings, Eva maintains a sort of a personal visual diary. Her choice of complex forms is deliberate and reconstructs the archetypes of altar pieces. The latter are divorced from their original sacramental meaning and take on a more down-to-earth, mundane character. Like an ornate icon setting without the icon would become just a shell devoid of any religious meaning. At the same time, the memories sacred to the artist are represented in noble forms that underscore their significance.
Paintings in old window frames comprise a retrospective of Eva Helki’s childhood memories. Exurban landscapes and indoor scenes, as if captured with an objective lens, are briming with a poignant sensation
The exposition is completed with a series of objects named after common turns of phrase that contain references to criminal slang and subculture. Fashioned as trite jokes, these objects appeal to our collective memory. Each artwork here is like a game where the artist utters the first word and expects the viewer to complete the phrase based on their collective memory. Indeed, over the many years of GULAG camps and of development of the penitentiary system, there has been an ongoing and inevitable creep of prison culture into the free society. Larger prison camps generated, first, the appearance of small villages around them, followed by entire cities and industrial enterprises, some of which have remained major clusters of industry to this day. In essence, the institutions for restriction of freedom and the space of freedom operated as two interpenetrating structures, facilitating an exchange of cultural and social norms. We keep on using many slang terms that originated deep in the criminal underworld, which corroboraates its massive proliferation in the era of repressions under Stalin and its subsequent inculcation in the Russian language. The series of objects by Helki, which may appear at first sight to be innocent puzzles, cannot but leave an anxious aftertaste from a mixture of genuineness and alienness. How can we become so familiar with something we have never experienced? Or have we, and simply preferred to forget?
Polina Mogilina