Irina Zatulovskaya. Flight into Egypt Automatic translate

Venue: Main Building (Volkhonka, 12), Hall No. 6
Curators: Anna Chudetskaya, Leading Researcher, Department of Private Collections of the Pushkin Museum; Olga Shishko, Head of the Film and Media Arts Department of the Pushkin Museum.

In the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin opens an exhibition of contemporary Russian artist Irina Zatulovskaya. The project continues the tradition of expositions-dialogues between a contemporary artist and the art of the past and supports the theme of the Cross Year of Humanitarian Cooperation between Russia and Egypt, which started in June 2021. Being inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt for many years, in this exhibition project the artist builds her own picture of the world, in which the works of ancient Egyptian masters from the museum’s collection and her own works interact in form, in likeness, in meaning.

The project presents both the works of Irina Zatulovskaya and works from the Egyptian collection of the museum - ushebti figurines (ritual figurines that were placed in the tomb during burial), boxes for ushebti, a stone altar, fragments of masks from sarcophagi, fragments of vessels and tissues - all of them are included artist into the system of associative links.

The metaphor in the title of the exhibition - "Flight to Egypt" - captured the desire of the artist Irina Zatulovskaya to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday existence. The central place in the pantheon of Ancient Egypt was occupied by the god Osiris: the Egyptians believed that everyone could repeat his fate - to die and be resurrected - if his body was transformed into a mummy.

The exposition itself is framed in the form of a stepped pyramid, created by designers Nadya Korbut and Kirill Ass, in the center of which Zatulovskaya places the mummies of brushes - old, worn brushes wrapped in canvas - a symbol of creative inspiration. The three sides of the pyramidal structure reflect the three sections of the exhibition: eternity/everyday life, twins/meeting, earth/birth. Light plays a special role in the exposition: it not only illuminates the exhibits, but also acts as an inspiring element.

A resident of Ancient Egypt firmly knew that there is life after death, that eternal life is a complete reflection of earthly existence: a person should take care of food, clothing, and household items in the afterlife. Irina Zatulovskaya in the section eternity/everyday life talks about those moments in her life when the breath of the eternal is suddenly felt in everyday life. The mosaic "Eat, you can sleep" is adjacent to the Egyptian altar and with an antique ceramic shard, which depicts St. Mary of Egypt.

The second important section is the twins/meeting. A person at all times does not leave the feeling that the real world has a double, and every person living on earth. The duality of the world can manifest itself both in paired cases and in the alternation of white and black stripes in life: today we eat white bread with sugar, and tomorrow black bread with salt. And a table with painted plates and forks can turn out to be a meeting place for a person with their doubles.

The third theme is earth/birth. Let every living person be doomed, but between birth and death there is a huge space of life, and it is connected with the place where a person was born. For Zatulovskaya, her native land is the land of the "middle zone" of Russia. Therefore, this section contains a fragment of a vessel, the ribs of which resemble even beds, and the “Favorite Garden” written on the board, and a naked female figure lying by the water. Labor on earth, the taste of the fruit, the breath of autumn - the sensual fabric of life has existed and will exist regardless of time, but depending on a specific geography, on a specific fate.

Irina Zatulovskaya seems to be telling her audience: we know practically nothing about death, except that it exists. But our consciousness cannot accept this. The artist searches the fabric of life for signs that human life does not end with physical death.

Reference:

Irina Zatulovskaya (b. 1954) is a Russian artist working in the style of arte povera (“poor art”), a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR (1979). Her works are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin and other museums in Russia, as well as in the museums of Finland, Poland, Italy. In 2017, Irina Zatulovskaya took part in the 57th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art as part of the Pushkin Museum team, which presented the exhibition “Man as a Bird. Travel Images”

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest museums of foreign art in Russia. The collection contains about 700 thousand works of different eras from ancient Egypt and ancient Greece to the beginning of the 21st century. In the halls of the art of Ancient Egypt, about 600 exhibits are exhibited, representing all periods of the history of the development of the country of the pharaohs, from the 4th millennium BC. until the first centuries of our era. The museum collection contains outstanding works of ancient Egyptian art: relief blocks from the tomb of Treasurer Izi of the Old Kingdom, a fragment of a statue of the king of the Middle Kingdom Amenemhat III, statuettes of the priest Amenhotep and the priestess Rannai, a cosmetic spoon from the period of the New Kingdom and others.