JOLIE ALIEN. DRY NETTLE

6 September - 16 October 2022

25 Petrovka Street, ground floor

Curator: Anastasia Nefedova

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, with the support of a-s-t-r-a gallery, presents the exhibition "Dry Nettle" by artist Jolie Alien. Jolie's first solo museum project brings together works from the last few years. Symbols of contemporary culture are juxtaposed with personal myth in Jolie's art. The lack of perspective, the imitation of childlike simplicity and expressiveness juxtaposed with surrealist imagery create a special sense of turbulence.

The original idea for the exhibition was based on the Garden of Eden in Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. The garden became the point of departure and the collective image of the project. At some point, it started to create its own semantic connections, sprawling, mutating, fading and rebirth, it took over the spaces in the exhibition halls, entering into a dialogue with the artworks and going far beyond the connotations of "paradise".

The gardens are present in the exhibition spaces, weaving their rude branches into the history of the museum building. Gubin's house, where the MMOMA is located - once a city manor - has long been surrounded by a garden, a greenhouse and a pond. The spectre of this history is embodied in the metal frame erected in the main exhibition hall.

In search of an artistic form, Jolie turns to sensory experience and the experience of today's reality. The transience of time and the human desire to capture it through instruments and technology prove to be key themes in the last room. Questioning the mechanisms of statistical control, she presents a crude scale of ordered markings designed to determine physical deviations or conformity to regulated norms. The resulting bias becomes part of the statement and is a meaningful feature of the identity of any garden and its inhabitants.

Text: Anastasia Nefedova