“TEMPORARY MONUMENTS” EXHIBITION, MAC USP MUSEUM, SAO PAULO, BRAZIL (September - October 2017)
A solo show by Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich at MAC-USP curated by Ana Avelar.
Performance: 1 pm - 8 pm (duration of 7 hours)
One of the leading performance artists from contemporary Russia, Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich is presenting The Temporary Monuments, his largest up-to-date solo show assuming a 4 year long artistic research on historical and contemporary slavery.
The Temporary Monuments is a series of 7 performances which lasted for 7 hours each and were performed between 2014 and 2017. They reenacted the endurance that was/still is typical for the history and modernity of slave labor in Brazil – from early times until nowadays. Through a medium of photographic installation and film Fyodor documents his “temporary monuments” – those that do not exist physically after completing their performative time frame but are marking the history and the attitude.
<...> I don't believe in monuments staying forever - with decades, they lose their initial, poignant context, and become mere architectural elements, birds' nests or a random background for a selfie. I believe in temporary monuments - those existing within a fixed time frame, marked by intense physical labor – a structure not set in stone, yet enjoying a continuous sense of momentum.<...> Despite the fact that the artist’s work is based on Brazil’s socio cultural context, the project is built on a widely global platform.
"My exhibition is not at all about one particular nation. I am Russian. I spend my time between there and Brazil. Both countries are struggling to cope with the heavy legacy of the totalitarian heritage: Brazilians still often think of themselves as either slaves or slave-owners while the Russians consider themselves the best and the sole nation in the world. In the meantime, Russia sadly holds the 7th position in the World Slavery Index (between North Korea and Nigeria) and 1,4 millions of workers in Russia consider themselves slaves due to severe work/life conditions. Most of them came to Russia from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and every year around 3 thousand coffins travel back to Central Asia. This people are also victims of attitude: 'normal' Russians treat them with hate, xenofobic fear and at times physical violence. My project is about how a slave continues to exist, in one form or another, in the head and in the body of each of us. Each monument lasts seven hours, since ’7’ is the maximum amount of objects our mind is able to visualize. (In some ancient cultures after the number ‘seven‘ came the numeral “many” as they weren’t able to count on.) And each monument is now captured, first in my memory (including physical, as in most cases it was quite exhausting), and secondly, in the form of installations and film”, – Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich.
After a successful rehearsal with the Russian museum visitors and the pre-premiering of the show at Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, the exhibition, now in complete shape, makes its way to the most direct audience for it – Brazilians. It will open at MAC-USP Museum on the 1th of April 2017 to co-inside with one of South America’s most important contemporary art events - SP-Arte.
The opening will include a live performance, the seventh monument by Pavlov-Andreevich, that will last for the long seven hours involving the artist hanging at 40 metres above the ground, on top of the museum’s building, in the open skies, calling for public attention towards a specific form of slavery existing in Brazil nowadays: a slavery of thinking, with racist ideology ruling the country’s natural constitution.
