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20/4/2007

Asya Reznikov

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Baggage Claim

Asya Reznikov was born in Russia in 1973, and moved to a small apartment on the outskirts of Boston with her parents and grandparents when she was five years old. No one in the family spoke English at that time. Thus, the artist became the first English-speaking member of the family, sponging up the language of her newfound home and country. Not only was she the first to learn English, she also became the translator for the family and the link to her new culture, a heavy load to bear for a young child.

Since the inception of her art making, the themes of travel, language, identity in different cultures as foreigner and traveler, immigration, emigration, and otherness have been her focus. She says:

Much of my interest in languages and cultures has to do with my personal cultural upbringing. Coming to the United States as a political refugee when I was a child has made me particularly aware of my cultural identity. Being raised in one culture at home, but surrounded by another culture outside created a sensitivity to languages, culture and identity.

As an adult, Reznikov has become an inveterate traveler--moving from and through different cultures by choice, in contrast to her move at age five--and an insatiable recorder of what she sees. She travels with her cameras, still and video, and captures images from around the world of cities, transit systems, buses, planes, trains, people, buildings, and monuments. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag writes: "The photographer is super tourist, an expansion of the anthropologist, visiting natives and bringing back news of their exotic doings and strange gear." This quote applies to Reznikov's use of her cameras--her footage the grist from which she composes her palette.

In her centerpiece three channel video triptych, Baggage Claim, Reznikov's newest work, each screen depicts a vehicle of transportation, on one screen are trains from many countries, on another cars, buses and taxis from all over the world, and on the third are airplanes taking off and landing at airports in many cities. Through the three screens a small figure, dressed for travel, all in black, walks, pulling her suitcase behind her. She treks from right to left through the central screen of airstrips with the eternal weight of her belongings in the suitcase. The traveler, the artist herself, has, in fact, become the sum of her belongings, a Sisyphus of modern times. From culture to culture, from car to train to plane she drags the stuff of her life around the world, never stopping. She is a powerful symbol of modern woman; on the move, her identity wrapped up in the contents of her heavy load.

Another new video was inspired by her yearlong DAAD fellowship in Berlin, and her many visits to European museums. Surrounded by history and art history, Reznikov created a vertical video contained within an old master-like gold leaf frame of herself as a contemporary "Venus" figure. In the center of the screen is a suitcase. As the artist rotates in one direction, she gets dressed, as she rotates in the other she gets undressed. Behind her are 360-degree views of cities that melt into one another. The cities become indistinguishable, one from another, they merge into fantasy places, impossible to identify. Reznikov spends a long time thinking about the impact and beauty of the images she uses, the cities, the merging of architectural identities.

A third piece, the artist's most political, also centers on a suitcase. Entitled Packing for Russia, the suitcase shows the artist's hands packing gifts to leave with relatives in Russia. To visit her relatives in what was her homeland, she travels with two suitcases, one for her clothes and "things," in which personal choice is present; the other filled with items her rela-tives can't buy in Russia because they are too expensive, such as jeans--she brings ten pairs, mascara--she brings enough to last a few years, among other gifts; less about personal choice than about life in present day Russia. Finally to top off the gifts in the suitcase, the artist buys fruit for her relatives when she visits them, as those who reside in Russia deem fruit a luxury expenditure. And that suitcase returns with the artist empty on the trip home. In addition to watching the gifts pile into the suitcase, one hears the artist walk back and forth to her dresser drawers, open and close her closet, zip and unzip side pockets. Packing is a window into the artist's continuing connection to Russia, a manifestation of her generosity when traveling to her place of birth, a remove from the suitcase that has come to symbolize herself and her unique identity.

Also on view will be photographs related to the above video work among others Reznikov will show in the Project Space. Like her Translation series, photographs of the artist in various locations in New York, in which she wears large wings created out of a few copies of a translation dictionary that translates every word into 26 different languages. Each feather is one word translated into 26 languages. Reznikov captures a provocative moment in time and space for which she is the model. No one can use the dictionaries for translation in the "Translation" series," as they have become the material for her wings, words as sculpture and metaphor for flight. Ever the thought-provoking and thoughtful artist.

Opening: Saturday, April 21, 6:00PM - 8:00PM

Nancy Hoffman Gallery
429 West Broadway, NY
Admission free

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