Tatiana Fiodorova
CAД // Garden
Curator: Cătălin Gheorghe
Aparte Project Space, Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, Iași, April 2011
A project produced by Vector Studio in partnership with UNAGE as part of Carte Blanche aux Jeunes Créateurs programme financially supported by Institut Français in Iaşi.
Curatorial argument:
The exhibition was produced within the Carte Blanche aux Jeunes Créateurs programme, financially and logistically supported by the French Cultural Centre in Iasi, in partnership with Vector – studio for art practices and debates (Iasi), in the series “Economics of Time” (sequence “Limit time. Lost time”).
Tatiana Fiodorova’s installation was designed as an evocation, without nostalgia and melancholy, of a past and reverberated time. The objects, the drawings, the photographs, the posters, the sketches, her video work, have presented, in the symbolic frames of a museum register, the memory relationship between daughter and father, the intimate family relationship and the ideologized relationship with the Soviet era.
The artist’s father was a graphic designer, painter and photographer. His photographs would capture the landscapes of Moldova, weddings in Moldovan villages, holidays in Soviet cities, portraits of rural residents. With the photographs taken in his travels through the villages he managed to earn additional money for the upkeep of his family, as his salary did not cover the day-to-day expenses. The exhibition presented the photos that he did not manage to sell.
Photographic practice also helped him in his creative exploration of painting. The artist’s father also created an album of medicinal herbs using his photographs and manufactured a set of wooden Cyrillic letters for his designer posters. In his last years, before he died, he would visit kolkhozes, picking up orders for propaganda posters.
The video project captured the emotional symbolism of a place transformed by time. Once upon a time, her father used to tie his motorcycle with a chain to a tree. Tatiana was six years old when her father died and she remembers how her mother tried for a long time to make a garden around the tree. She planted flowers, but they did not survive. After heavy rains, the place would become deserted. This place has become a garden for memories only.
Tatiana Fiodorova lives and works as an artist, graphic designer, teacher, curator and cultural manager in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova. She teaches drawing, painting and composition at the Shciusev School of Art. Tatiana Fiodorova makes installations, performances, videos, digital works and works in the public space, being interested in the relations between social, political and aesthetic issues. Her design works are associated with problems of social interaction, aiming to create spaces for intercultural dialogue. One of her projects, ARTPLOSHADKA (www.artploshadka.wordpress.com) aims to create an online community of the cultural sector in the Republic of Moldova. This project arose as a result of the debates held within the project of the European Cultural Fund and the Soros Foundation Moldova supported by the MATRA programme.