Catwings with Shifra Osorio Whewell and Anastasia Sosunova
26.2.2023 19h
Screenings and talks
Rebecca and her daughters by Shifra Osorio Whewell (Fishra) and
Agents by Anastasia Sosunova
︎︎︎ Anastasia Sosunova is a visual artist based in Vilnius. Sosunova’s multidisciplinary practice, combining video, installation, graphics and sculpture, grows from personal histories and their entanglements within broader cultural, economical and spiritual structures. Her work focuses in particular on the bonds around which communities are forged, from local vernacular art to social neighborhoods to religious organisations. She observes how these closed groups are developed, often in reaction to other values or beings, and how they subsist through shared sentiments and the development of rituals, traditions and collective agreements.
Through a process of distortion and the interweaving of elements belonging to old mythologies, hybrid entities and the surveillance society, Sosunova creates alternative forms of ‘contemporary folklore’. Spanning lifestyle concepts to pillars of belief, these new folklores are at once a play with notions of home and belonging, a questioning of existence and coexistence, and a critical view on structures of power and the psychology of collectivity. Her work serves as a proposition for new ways of living by rules, ethics, codes and agreements between beings.
Agents is a moving image work which was created during the spring of 2020, contemplating on the folk art aesthetics in contemporary culture and observing the effect of strict quarantine measures on the public space. Revisiting and filming the sites with public sculpture made in traditional wood crafting motifs of her region, Sosunova notices how forests and parks are gradually filled with spontaneous vernacular art and temporary structures by its visitors. Investigating the agency behind the folk art revival and the vernacular creativity, the protagonist of the video initiates a dialogue with a wood artisan to learn what lies behind their intentions to reproduce ethnic imagery and creating new myths on top of the old ones.
As the fictional conversation unfolds on whether the agency may be distributed around a host of artifacts enrolled in the realization of our original intentions, the two in the car wait for an ‘agent’ to be sighted in the flesh and action.
︎︎︎ Fishra drinks old stories, stirs them up with the outrageous/wonderful/bad shit that goes on under our noses and spits them out: the bitter sweet spot between hymn and public broadcast danger warning. She likes words. Phonically, meaningfully, in sense and nonsense. Working with video, text, props, sound, music, performance --- it's all about the mixing together of these things into a hotpot. Fishra aims to exalt the local; to harness the transformative and emancipating force of fantasy fiction; to use old and new narratives to let us interpret our experience and ultimately give us joyous and indignant agency in the world.
Rebecca and her daughters: A Newsical broadcast covering the Rebecca Riots: It is July 13th 1843 and West Wales has suffered terrible harvests, while rents, tithes, poor rates and crucially the turnpike tolls rise higher and higher. Agricultural communities are plunged into dire poverty. Recalling a blessing in Genesis ‘Let thy seed possess the gate of those who hate them’, mobs of farmers dress themselves as Rebecca to march on the tollgates. In the battle that ensues, fluo fringed gate builders clash with the masked and resplendent daughters of Rebecca.
Artists: Shifra Osorio Whewell (Fishra), Anastasia Sosunova
More information on the program: catwings.space
Mingling with Againness Part IV
26.2.2023 19h
Screenings and talks
Rebecca and her daughters by Shifra Osorio Whewell (Fishra) and
Agents by Anastasia Sosunova
︎︎︎ Anastasia Sosunova is a visual artist based in Vilnius. Sosunova’s multidisciplinary practice, combining video, installation, graphics and sculpture, grows from personal histories and their entanglements within broader cultural, economical and spiritual structures. Her work focuses in particular on the bonds around which communities are forged, from local vernacular art to social neighborhoods to religious organisations. She observes how these closed groups are developed, often in reaction to other values or beings, and how they subsist through shared sentiments and the development of rituals, traditions and collective agreements.
Through a process of distortion and the interweaving of elements belonging to old mythologies, hybrid entities and the surveillance society, Sosunova creates alternative forms of ‘contemporary folklore’. Spanning lifestyle concepts to pillars of belief, these new folklores are at once a play with notions of home and belonging, a questioning of existence and coexistence, and a critical view on structures of power and the psychology of collectivity. Her work serves as a proposition for new ways of living by rules, ethics, codes and agreements between beings.
Agents is a moving image work which was created during the spring of 2020, contemplating on the folk art aesthetics in contemporary culture and observing the effect of strict quarantine measures on the public space. Revisiting and filming the sites with public sculpture made in traditional wood crafting motifs of her region, Sosunova notices how forests and parks are gradually filled with spontaneous vernacular art and temporary structures by its visitors. Investigating the agency behind the folk art revival and the vernacular creativity, the protagonist of the video initiates a dialogue with a wood artisan to learn what lies behind their intentions to reproduce ethnic imagery and creating new myths on top of the old ones.
As the fictional conversation unfolds on whether the agency may be distributed around a host of artifacts enrolled in the realization of our original intentions, the two in the car wait for an ‘agent’ to be sighted in the flesh and action.
︎︎︎ Fishra drinks old stories, stirs them up with the outrageous/wonderful/bad shit that goes on under our noses and spits them out: the bitter sweet spot between hymn and public broadcast danger warning. She likes words. Phonically, meaningfully, in sense and nonsense. Working with video, text, props, sound, music, performance --- it's all about the mixing together of these things into a hotpot. Fishra aims to exalt the local; to harness the transformative and emancipating force of fantasy fiction; to use old and new narratives to let us interpret our experience and ultimately give us joyous and indignant agency in the world.
Rebecca and her daughters: A Newsical broadcast covering the Rebecca Riots: It is July 13th 1843 and West Wales has suffered terrible harvests, while rents, tithes, poor rates and crucially the turnpike tolls rise higher and higher. Agricultural communities are plunged into dire poverty. Recalling a blessing in Genesis ‘Let thy seed possess the gate of those who hate them’, mobs of farmers dress themselves as Rebecca to march on the tollgates. In the battle that ensues, fluo fringed gate builders clash with the masked and resplendent daughters of Rebecca.
Artists: Shifra Osorio Whewell (Fishra), Anastasia Sosunova
More information on the program: catwings.space
