Anastasia Sosunova
Agents
Video, 14:57 min
2020
Commissioned for Roots to Routes
Les Parallèles du sud – Manifesta 13 Marseille
28 August–25 October 2020
Curated by Merilin Talumaa, Justė Kostikovaitė, Maija Rudovska, with the support of the Baltic Culture Fund
Presented at Manifesta 13 Marseille, FUTURA Prague; OVNI Nice; 14th edition of the Baltic Triennial, CAC Vilnius; New Museum, New York
Who are we? What defines us? What traditions, folk-tales and habits are at work when we speak about our roots? Working along the lines of identity myths, ghosts of the past and present, for the project Roots to Routes artist Anastasia Sosunova created Agents – a new moving image work around the reception of folk art during quarantine.
“That’s confusing, but stimulating when phenomena don’t have a name to call them after. For example, during the quarantine, the only place where people were allowed to spend time outdoors was the forest, and at least in my neighbourhood, the forest started changing rapidly, by being filled with various spontaneous human creations, structures and drawings, it was something like the production of the locality described by Arjun Appadurai, the colonization of nature, something between a violent invasion and an irresistible urge to create and produce the new cultural context. And I also don’t know what to call it, this creative use of all the materials at hand, marking the area, building fortresses, but at the same time this ‘Everything will be fine’ message from the municipality leaks here, the children’s receptivity reflects it. Maybe it’s also folk art, I mean art belonging to people, here and now…”
Anastasia Sosunova is a visual artist based in Vilnius. Her multidisciplinary practice consists of video, installation, sculpture, graphic art and writing. Sosunova manipulates personal stories, images that define locations and the subtle material gestures people leave behind in the environments they inhabit. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art 2, Riga; Kogo, Tartu; online pavilion of the Wrong BiennaIe; I: project space, Beijing; Contemporary Art Center, Rupert and Editorial, Vilnius; The Sunroom, Richmond/USA.