Exhibition Natalia Zaloznaya "Escape" Automatic translate

11. 12GALLERY presents a personal exhibition of Natalia Zaloznaya “Escape”.

Natalia Zaloznaya is a Belarusian artist who has been living in Belgium for more than 15 years. Natalia is a regular participant in solo and group exhibitions around the world. She represented Belarus at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, and her works are stored in the State Tretyakov Gallery and the National Art Museum of Belarus.

Working on the creation of works for the “Escape” exhibition, the artist posed eternal existential questions: how free is man in the modern world; can he consciously believe that he has the right to choose, being captive to reality, politics, history; can really be aware of what is happening and make a strong-willed decision. Escape in this case symbolizes the departure of the individual into himself, into his unconscious, his illusions and thereby salvation from social realities.

The escape. 2016, canvas, acrylic, 80x60

"Escape from reality" is a widespread phenomenon in Western literature, philosophy and psychology. This is a kind of protective mechanism that protects a person from undesirable reality. John R. R. Tolkien and his friend Clive Lewis gave him a positive meaning. They noted that the flight from reality generated by imagination and literature gives comfort and satisfaction. Often it is a prerequisite for creativity.

The escape. 2016, canvas, acrylic, 80x100

French existentialists perceived the alienation of man as an inevitable reaction to this "crazy, crazy world." Jean Paul Sartre in the novel "Nausea" creates the image of a hero who is hard and uncomfortable in society, he separates himself from other people, looks at their existence with pity, for him it is empty. Albert Camus wrote of "the clash between irrationality and the frenzied desire for clarity, whose call is given in the very depths of the human soul." A person wants to be happy and find the meaning of life, but the world does not give an answer to these questions. Hence the desire to flee.

Natalia Zaloznaya approaches the issue of avoiding reality with her intricate subtlety and grace. In the works created for the “Escape” exhibition, the characters are asleep. To hide in the unconscious, to plunge into yourself - their attempt to gain freedom. Some works were done by the author from documentary photographs of sleeping people. A camouflage net of flowers, supplementing these plots, symbolizes the entanglement of a person by the ruling ideology, over which he is not in control and which may be hostile to him. The grid is presented as a foreign element covering sleeping people. At first glance, it seems that it is artificially integrated into the plot, but this artificiality is not accidental. She talks about the distortion, inorganicity of the system of views and ideas of the ruling power and the imposition of its worldview on other members of society. This is especially pronounced in totalitarian and authoritarian societies, where human freedoms are minimized. The personality is in the networks of the dominant ideology and its entire existence is subordinate to it. It is difficult to change external circumstances, but one can seek freedom within oneself.

On the other hand, an individual immersed in an unconscious state is vulnerable and weak-willed, he can easily become an object for manipulation by others. This vulnerability is reflected in the series of works “Playing Cards”, depicting a sleeping person and his inverted reflection.

Playing cards. 2016, canvas, acrylb 140x100

The installation has the identical meaning, built of the same playing cards in the form of a closed track on the principle of dominoes. The maps contain photographs of children’s tin soldiers. Installation carries an amazing semantic load. Zaloznaya tries to express the fact that we are all participants in various games taking place in society, and act in accordance with the rules and laws of reality, regardless of our beliefs and preferences. This is most severely manifested in war conditions, when a person is not in control even of the most valuable that he has, his own life.

What role does the person play in the surrounding reality: a weak-willed puppet or a full-fledged participant? Can she gain freedom from imposed conditions and does such freedom give her escape into her inner world. The answer to these questions can be obtained by visiting the exhibition of Natalia Zaloznaya “Escape”.