A monument to memory
Large-scale catastrophic processes leave an indelible mark on society: new fears, anxieties, and prejudices arise. Strategies of artistic interpretation of these tragic events can be varied: testimonial, which documents events that became a source of upheaval; metaphorical interpretation of catastrophe; the path of associative reflection on what has occurred. Art establishes a distance between the subject and the event, helping to capture and express pain and suffering in symbolic forms. Mayana Nasybullina frequently delves into the phenomena of collective and historical memory in her artistic practice, reinterpreting the legacy of the past with an eye towards the present.
In her new project "Monument of Memory," the artist continues her exploration, asking questions: what do we remember? and what do we forget? Is representation of traumatic experience possible? Can trauma be liberated?
Perhaps memory was given to us to remember traumatic experiences and never repeat them. However, in reality, there are fewer and fewer people who truly remember. They disappear, fade away, depart, come to an end. Just like the many ceramic figurines of Mayana frozen in the process of their creation. The experience of human civilization shows us how the state produces artificial patterns of remembrance — silencing the real, leaving memories on the sidelines of history, or inventing its own. But here's what's important: no one chooses whether to remember trauma or not. Trauma cannot be forgotten. It doesn't leave. It remains within each of us, and no forms of oblivion can erase it. It's a kind of "dark memory," because no matter how much it's pushed into the distant and hidden corners of the collective unconscious, it still influences our present and, more often than not, shapes it.
Philosopher Oksana Timofeeva, describing the military collective unconscious, reflects on the semantic play of the word "repetition," which comes from the Latin repetitio — "repetition." This strange dialectic ("apparently, rehearsal rehearses something that is yet to come, whereas repetition repeats what has already been") is found by the philosopher in the current experience of our nation, where during military equipment parades, civilians simultaneously rehearse and repeat the script of a phantasmagorical war. "Each new war both repeats and rehearses another war; wars reflect one another," writes Timofeeva in her essay "Soldiers and Prostitutes."
By asking how to break the cycle of repetitions and halt the production of new traumas, Mayana Nasybullina creates an installation space of total mourning. In this space, facing the "dark memory" of the Soviet past face to face, there is an opportunity to journey through grief to its end. For moving forward, it's necessary to understand what's left behind. Drawing from the tradition of a memorial ensemble as a symbol and source of historical memory, Mayana transforms its key elements, preserving the distinctive and recognizable aesthetics of Soviet monumentality. Instead of stone-enshrined warriors, there are frozen figures of mourners; instead of a triumphant eternal flame, there's a well filled with tears.
Ilya Kronchev-Ivanov
