A step into the \u201cA Shadow of the Soul but Slightly Sharper\u201d exposition at the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow, and you\u2019re taken back to the quarantine times. Lockdown themed art pieces fill the walls, and your soul returns to that time period. Although everything but uninteresting, the pieces show the reality of lockdown boredom, fear and hope are all portrayed in the pieces, making them relatable to any person who has gone through this pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exhibition features over 100 pieces of art from 42 Russian artists created during the pandemic or far before , but which may be re-interpreted in modern times. Different techniques are also seen throughout the pieces; sculptures, acrylic paintings, graphic art, watercolor paintings, collages, and photos are all used to convey different messages portraying the stress of living through a pandemic. The art created a long time before the pandemic isn\u2019t as clearly related to Covid-times as the pieces created during it, but the relationship can be traced back to the oppression many artists felt in communistic USSR in the 70s-80s, which is comparable to the \u201clack\u201d of freedom now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The actual name of the exhibition comes from the poem \u201cMoney\u201d by Aleksey Parshyikov, which discusses how politicians shape our futures, and that their soul is the shadow of ours but slightly sharper. A sharper soul. There are many interpretations of this name choice. Either the name is referring to the poor performance of the politicians during the pandemic, and how inconsiderate they were of simple human needs or how our souls have become more serious and mature during the lockdown. Personally, I believe that the name is a metaphor of humanity becoming more mature during Covid times. However, since the title is so open to exegesis, each person can come to their own conclusion of the true meaning of it once they visit the exposition. Names such as this one surely make one think when viewing the art exposed, rather than just merely look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the pieces exhibited were truly magnificent, having context and meaning, and executed perfectly within their technique. There were a few that stood out to me in particular. \u201cLooking out of The Window Arkhipov\u201d by Ilya Kabakov, is a series of drawings of a view out of a hospital window from the perspective of a dying person. The drawings portray mundane scenes, which then get emptier and emptier, and the last drawing is a page full of angel wings, representing death.. Another artwork that stood out to me was a painting by Mikhail Roginsky, named \u201cExit\u201d. The painting features a door with an exit sign on it, and with \u201cavoid anything that angers you\u201d written beside it. My take on the symbolism of this painting is that it represents the familiar feeling we\u2019ve all experienced during lockdown: wanting to go outside, while knowing that everything that you\u2019ll encounter there will deeply annoy you, yet you have the tempting \u201cEXIT\u201d sign right in front of you. Surprisingly, this piece was painted in the 1980s, a long time before Covid hit us. There were also many pieces related to social media, an inevitable part of our society, which had great influence on the quarantine experience for many of us, portraying how attached we\u2019ve become to the lives we see through a screen rather than reality. I could go on and on discussing the art pieces in this exhibition that I enjoyed, which would essentially involve mentioning almost all the pieces!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Full of masterpieces both from the present and past, this exhibition was impressively well organized and is definitely worth a visit to Moscow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A step into the \u201cA Shadow of the Soul but Slightly Sharper\u201d exposition at the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow, and you\u2019re taken…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":56,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}