Every gram counts

Exhibition: august - december, 2020
Contemporary Museum Wroclaw, Poland
Curator: Piotr Lisowski
Text: Piotr Lisowski
Photo: Małgorzata Kujda courtesy of Contemporary Museum Wroclaw

The starting point for Ala Savashevich’s installation is the Soviet avant-garde, which in the first decades of the 20th century adopted radical slogans of building a new aesthetics based on formal discipline of simple geometric elements. Only the avant-garde was capable of shattering the old ways of thinking in order to build a new, better world. This form of art was often used as a source of state propaganda, only to be eventually banned and eliminated in favour of socialist realism. Savashevich emphasises the entanglement of art in the mechanisms of propaganda and power, but she also analyses the impact of various art forms and activities in public space on citizens. One of the flags-fabrics making up the levitating “pennant” is clearly superior in terms of its strength and size. Although the artist does not refer directly to the Soviet past, she analyses the universal methods of influencing individuals and the masses by the system. She wants to show how the form can affect human consciousness, turning subjectivity into collectiveness.