Volga

2015 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Aslan Goisum


The video work Volga by Aslan Goisum begins with a sweeping field caught under a misty, gray sky. In the center of the frame is a white car of the eponymous Soviet make—standard-issue for the imperial administrative class during the USSR’s ‘Period of Stagnation.’ The vehicle is the only indication of cultural geography in the video; what unfolds must be somewhere in the former USSR. In a slow crescendo of activity and tension, small groups of men, women, and children, walk up to the car and squeeze into it. The situation presented is one of hurried escape, as experienced by hundreds of thousands during the Russian-Chechen Wars of 1994–2009. Yet, the twenty-one passengers allow themselves to be swallowed by the car with calm and dignity. Despite the absurdity, their reactions are allegorical for travel in a wider and less urgent sense, or even as a stoic display of dark humor. Goisum often approaches uncomfortable truths indirectly, elliptically, bringing to the fore the spectral encounter between the seen and the unseen. It is there that lived experience becomes poetic image: both expansive field and precisely scripted action. Volga , like much of Goisum’s work, mines memory—collective and personal, political and cultural—for clues about colonial realities, how they have been endured, and how they might be undone.


Chechen artist Aslan Goisum’s work engages with memories–collective and personal, political and cultural–to unearth clues about colonial realities, how they have been endured, and how they might be undone. Gosium’s primary artistic tools span moving image, sculptural installation, and various paper-based techniques. Identities frequently come into play in his work, as embodied effects of violence and suffering, but also as potential new beginnings.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Yin-Ju Chen
© » KADIST

I Adama Greetings humans...

AIDS Sculpture By General Idea Finds Permanent Home In Amsterdam Park
© » ARTLYST

General Idea

Following its display at the General Idea retrospective in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam The post AIDS Sculpture By General Idea Finds Permanent Home In Amsterdam Park appeared first on Artlyst ....

Matthew Buckingham
© » KADIST

New York, August 2011, Gloria Maso met Matthew Buckingham who told her about his work “The six grandfathers, Paha Sapa, in the year 502 002” (2002)...

2012.11.4 Takata-cho
© » KADIST

Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Auto Control as a Form of Landscape
© » KADIST

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger

2017

This triptych is based on a Tesla whose interior the artist customized on the Tesla website...

Dave
© » KADIST

Mohamed Bourouissa

2018

Dave is part of Mohamed Bourouissa’s project Horse Day , which stemmed from a residency the artist conducted in Philadelphia in 2014...

Articles of Virtu
© » LENS CULTURE

Articles of Virtu - Photographs by Bryan Birks | Text by Magali Duzant | LensCulture Award winner Articles of Virtu Prized old automobiles—that most American of obsessions—are the entry point to the surprising beauty and tenderness of their owners, the communities they belong to, and the aspirations they hold dear...

Out of the Shadows II
© » KADIST

Willie Doherty

1997

“I focused on how the political and physical merged” analyzes Willie Doherty...