13.09 — 18.10.2016
“Temporary Monuments”
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich
featuring
‘O PAIRADO’ (Suspended in the Air) - a 7-hour live endurance performance that unfolded at the height of 25 meters/82 feet over Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Pechersky Gallery
curated by Anastasia Shavlokhova
Is one’s body capable of feeling the pain of another as his/her own? Is it possible to break up the collective memory into separate fragments and experience them physically by making them a part of your personal story? Artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich in his series “Temporary monuments” invokes the history of slavery in Brazil. Although slavery was officially abolished in Brazil in 1888, it remains in a latent form of forced labor as well as in the colonial black-white division of people to this day. As a starting point for his performances Fyodor took seven of the most popular episodes of tortures and punishments of slaves. The artist as a hero of ancient myths passes the trials reproducing every single episode, similar to the passing through the dead and the living water. He climbs up a palm tree and sits there for seven hours; he lies on the beach constrained and surrounded by vultures; drowns in the waves of the ocean; hangs suspended by his legs on a tree for hours; crosses the city on foot in a muzzle-mask and eventually chains himself to a post.
For Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich the ”Temporary monuments” is a project that shows how a slave continues to live, in one form or another, in the head and in the body of each of us. All monuments last seven hours, since “7” is the maximum number of hours that the human brain is able to visualize. The artist does not believe in the conventional monuments. Whereas the temporary monument has a chance for a deep imprint in the memory of the beholder - as the memory retains the ephemeral much stronger than the physical.
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