In everyday life, the topic of death is often repressed, and only the encounter with the loss of a loved one makes one remember the frailty, fragility, and transience of existence. Olya Matyukhina’s debut exhibition “IVANOVA” was a response to the experiences associated with the personal loss of a loved one - her grandfather. With the help of her works, Matyukhina tries to preserve and rethink her memories of warm summer days in the village spent with her grandparents.

For an artist, turning to her roots is not only a way to better understand her history, but also an opportunity to maintain her identity in a world with an endless flow of new information, endless wars and crises. In a world where price, rather than quality, is increasingly becoming the main characteristic. In a world that does nothing but constantly accelerate, offering a person simple solutions in the form of quick food, one-time dates and endless content that not only does not let you get bored, but also blocks any opportunity to be alone with your thoughts. Thus, modern man faces a difficult task: to keep up with this rhythm without losing himself.

By combining her own vision and design experience with memories from life in the village, Matyukhina is able to create her own visual language in which the past meets the present. Thus, a green bush made of tulle and paper is an homage to the grandfather’s image, which can be seen in the photo nearby: birch brooms hanging on the man’s shoulders, collected for the bath, seem to form a bush on his chest. Like the brooms themselves, the resulting art object is light, rustling and a little prickly. The boots in the center of the hall are another important attribute of grandfather’s life. There was a whole collection of them in the house: different sizes and heights, depending on the purpose. The installation was based on the model of the boots that grandfather used to rinse clothes in the river - tall, emphasizing his stocky gait and giving him a smart look. Olya’s boots are already different - bright pink, glossy. This color was not chosen by chance: the inspiration was the fuchsia flowering fields of fireweed in July. It was this month that Grandfather Olya passed away. Bright pink also appears in other works of the artist: in a knitted sweater, the ornament of which is inspired by village fields; it is also used to stitch the fabric of a suit made from scraps of fabric. When creating it, Matyukhina turned to her grandmother’s sewing technique and her ability to create new clothes and household items by sewing together pieces of old clothing.

The exhibition ends with video art by Matyukhina with footage from her native field, the subtitles for which consist of familiar, painfully familiar expressions and phrases spoken by her grandparents.

Olya named her exhibition project after the family name of her grandfather. Ivanova is one of the most common and simple Russian surnames. But, as is usually the case, the most important things are found in the simplest things.