SMS Written with Threads
These artistic works emerged during a period of strained romantic relationships. Balancing politeness with honesty, Kolya limited himself to SMS messages, while Zhenya embroidered them—sometimes on random pieces of fabric, sometimes directly onto her paintings depicting scenes from the residential neighborhood where they both lived. The narrative or intrigue of their romance cannot be reconstructed from these fragments, but one can trace a "dramatic" trajectory from "Zhenya, I’ll call you…" (02/14/12) to "Zhenya, I don’t want to, sorry" (07/01/12). At the same time, one can sense the artist's deeply emotional response to these messages through the character of the embroidery, the changing textures and colors of fabric, thread, and beads.
The intensity of her experience is conveyed through disproportionate effort: what was typed with one hand in a matter of seconds is reproduced by the artist in a painstakingly traditional, labor-intensive craft. This investment of time reveals the "fatal essence of the lover"—the one who waits (R. Barthes). The artist’s unexpected choice of needle over brush, clumsy stitches over confident strokes, and words over imagery is justified by therapeutic considerations. In healing her wound, the artist follows archaic gendered models: "Historically, it is Woman who speaks of separation: Woman is sedentary, Man is the hunter, the wanderer; Woman is faithful (she waits), Man is restless (he roams, strays elsewhere). Woman gives separation its form, develops its narrative, because she has the time—she weaves and sings" (Barthes).
A year later, these works were publicly exhibited in the same residential neighborhood—the former lover giving way to a transformed artist.
A. Shabanov