JANA SMETANINA "A wave of the hand" Automatic translate

“A wave of the hand” is the debut project of Yana Smetanina at the Fine Art Gallery. Working mainly with photography, video, graphics, installation for this project, she chose the classic technique - canvas / oil and presented 9 paintings. Why? Yana says: “It seems to me that art should evoke emotions. Emotions make you think. In our age of technology, an ever-accelerating time, I feel close to the sensation of the human, warm, sensual. Computer texts and icq communication deprive the words, if not the main thing - the main meaning, but very important: intonation. ” Yana is known for many of her projects on pain points in society. She planned this project as romantic. However, considering the presented works, we feel in each of them a lot of meanings and intonations besides romanticism.

On each canvas Smetanina we see a gesture of the characters - a wave of the hand. “Oh, wave of the hand, - / blow of fate! / Oh, wave of the hand, - / you will not corrupt us with anything!” - writes E. Evtushenko enthusiastically. About the gesture she chose, as the main action of the heroes, Yana reports: “A wave of the hand, like goodbye or greeting, is probably one of the first gestures that are taught in childhood. "Petia, wave your uncle with a pen - while uncle." And the baby raises his hand above his head. " However, Yana immediately continues: “An atrophied attempt to grab, hold and not let go of the slipping away object of farewell.” Yes, this gesture is ambiguous, it can be an interpersonal non-verbal way of expressing feelings, but it can also be an attribute of professional affiliation, for example, among the military, among Hitler and his fascists, the peoples father Stalin waved his hand to the demonstrators. Either a hug, or a crucifix! In one of the paintings, a happy family waves their hands at us, leaving for the forest, but don’t relax in tenderness, the artist warns in the title of the work - “After the demonstration we went for a walk in the forest, burned fires and possibly turned into maniacs.” “Pioneer Zoya” in a red tie and a short children’s skirt threw up her hand, and on her not young face her thin lips were tightly compressed.

All the works of Yana Smetanina carry in themselves symbolism, the sign of the Soviet era. “I am stuck in the Soviet past, because, probably, my childhood fell on his sunset, leaving very vivid memories, such as can only be in childhood,” the artist reports. But this is not a nostalgic project about childhood that lives in us until the end of our days. On Smetanina’s canvases we see specific iconic heroes of the Soviet era, for example, Gagarin (“Our Great Pride”), Tsoi (“Our hearts demanded change”), Vysotsky (“My first beloved man is already married to another”), as well as their - nameless laborers in helmets (“We have oil”), a detachment of pioneers (“Detachment, free”). Post-Soviet culture and society are filled with nostalgia and myth-creation about the Soviet past. At the same time, both official nostalgia, instilled mainly through the box, and grassroots, personal, are observed. Look how good it was without rallies, oppositions, when the whole Soviet people, as one man, condemned with deep indignation… or met with deep enthusiasm… The elderly are longing for youth and composing fairy tales to their grandchildren. Yana grabbed that era only with a piece of her childhood, but managed to feel "in her childhood, a feeling of total great lies." Because so multilayered in the meaning of her work. The language of visualization corresponds to that expressed by the artist. Images give birth to allusions with a poster of the Soviet era, with book illustrations of the sixties conceptualists. This is a very subtle stylization of bygone time.