1st GRAUND Biennale "Textiles in Contemporary Art"

29.02 — 9.05.2024

GRAUND Solyanka, Solyanka Street, ½, bldg. 2 (entrance from Zabelina Street).

Participants of the exhibition — artists-in-residence from fifteen galleries — will present their works on both floors of the GRAUND Solyanka Gallery-Workshop.

Details and tickets here.

Nine artists from a—s—t—r—a gallery will show their works: Sergey Sonin and Elena Samorodova, Oksana Afanasyeva, Lisa Neklessa, Dima Hunzelweg, Gruppa (Dasha Anikeeva, Kirill Borisov), Nadia Petrova and Katya Zorkaya.

Sergey Sonin and Elena Samorodova are multimedia artists, working in two capitals: Moscow and St. Petersburg, founders of a number of art associations. They will present a "milfleur" trellis, which is part of the large-scale mystification "Utopia and Uchronia". Reconstruction of the failed past is created with the help of maximally detailed made objects of arts and crafts.

Oksana Afanasyeva - the artist creates art based on her diaries. Description of events, reflection, self-reflection, dreams, experiences - the diary is her reflection. With the help of objects and installations Oksana opens her world to people. At the Biennale she will show objects-dresses. The image of the dress is symbolic for Oksana, it is largely from her childhood, but enlarged in size to show the artist now. The phrases embroidered inside are the concepts and attitudes that are imposed on many in childhood by family, society.

Lisa Neklessa is an artist actively working with the textile medium. In a series of embroideries Lisa creates an author's myth based on a mystical perception of nature. The works presented at the Biennale are a search for new meanings, symbols and a reflection on the new interaction between man and nature.

Dima Hunzelweg is an artist focused on form as a source of visual worldview. In this regard, his works can be seen as a new step in the deeply established tradition of post-minimalism and geometric abstraction. The Biennale presents works devoted to such an aspect of the legacy of Russian cosmism as the constant pursuit of exploration. In Hunzelweg's art, this process takes a new turn, pushing the boundaries of art and media literally and metaphorically. Hence the frequent use of neoprene, which has an elastic and flexible texture and is much more common in the fashion industry.

Gruppa (Dasha Anikeeva, Kirill Borisov) is a creative studio from Moscow that develops its visual language based on local heritage, traditions, and historically established paradigms. It was founded in 2015 by designers Dasha Anikeeva and Kirill Borisov. They show Portal, which is the result of an exploration of the relationship between time and design. It is a tool of intentional movement in time from the present to the past and back. The Portal is an illustration of Gruppa's approach to design and a metaphor for the cyclical nature of its everyday life.

Nadia Petrova is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Art "Free Workshops" of MMOMA and the British Higher School of Design, Nadia works in two media: knitting and drawing, united by the idea of eternal repetition of a subject or motif. The artist will present a series of lace canvases depicting various poisons, both in the literal sense (plants, insects) and in psychological and social terms (phobias, toxic masculinity, actions of power), how to interact with these poisons, how to fight, how to come to terms with them, she reflects on this through meditative lace weaving.

Katya Zorkaya is an artist looking for images in primitive art, shamanism, African aboriginal art, paganism, folk folklore, primitivism, early iconography. At the Biennale presents the object "Drunken Man". "His hot and heavy body lies humbly on the cold ground... his mind is mobile and quiet at the same time...".