04/10/2018 – 11/11/2018
Ukrainian Institute of America presents a solo-project by Anastasiia Podervianska “High Textile”.
Anastasiia Podervianska acquired her education in monumental art. For the last four years she has been experimenting with textiles. Her stitched collages combine Ukrainian decorative and ethno-romantic tradition with comic book elements. These qualities give her works a cross-cultural resonance, helping it to transcend the traditional archaic framework. Her works are an attempt to visually reimagine traditional iconographic motifs, transforming them emotionally and lending new meanings to canonical images. The synthesis of traditional techniques and canons with cutting-edge technologies and perspectives give works a new sound.
“High Textile” project combines works from two series: “Country Horror” and “Coatportrait”. She created the “Country Horror” (2016) project based on a book by Ukrainian ethnographer Heorhii Bulashev “Ukrainian people in their legends, religious views and beliefs”, which was published in 1909. Each work from this series resembles a narrative from one of the legends. Thus, the artist retells each tale through traditional Ukrainian motives and contemporary décor. The tone of these legends resembles apocryphal texts. They combine Biblical motives with vivid national elements. Podervianska’s artworks bear similar connotations. She creates her own visual language to depict disparities between sacred texts and their interpretation of vivid, emotive national language. The artist discovers her own version of Ukrainian folklore in the form of a ‘textile-comics’ by combining pictorial representation with narration, as well as borrowing images from contemporary mass-culture. In order to create a textile composition, Podervianska utilizes myriad of embroidery techniques - canvases are decorated with hand-made lace, interwoven with beads and adorned with applique.
“Coatportrait” (2017) is a series of hand-embroidered coats, which depict portraits from masterpieces of well-known artists. Podervianska collaborated on this project with Ukrainian designer Lili Bratus. Podervianska’s background as a theatre artist, especially her experience in designing costumes for her father’s (Les’ Podervyansky) plays, was very useful for this project. This project shows a thin line between art and fashion, since “Coatportrait” can be viewed as a series of artworks, as well as a particular grotesque haute-couture collection.
Combination of these two series under one roof allows the viewer to acquaint themselves better and in more detail with artistic searches and endeavors of this young artist, as well as to discover how a traditional female craft positions itself and transforms and within the context of contemporary art.
Anastasiia Podervianska was born in 1978 in Kyiv, in the family of artists. She graduated from the T.H. Shevchenko Republican Art School in 1996, and from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, where she studied at the Department of Monumental Art under the tutelage of the Academy member M.A. Storozhenko, in 2002. Voloshyn Gallery displayed Podervianska’s artworks in a number of international art fairs, such as Scope Miami Beach 2017 (USA) and VOLTA 14 (Basel, Switzerland). Podervianska’s works can be seen in Eurolab collections, at the Museum of Modern Art of Ukraine, as well as in private collections in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Macedonia, and the USA. She actively participates in solo and group projects. Podervianska’s works have been exhibitied in international art fairs, such as Scope Miami Beach 2017 (Miami, USA), VOLTA 12 (Basel, Switzerland) and Vienna Contemporary 2018 (Vienna, Austria). Currently the artist lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.