Art on Myasnitskaya street: Chukotka theme
Nadja Brykina Gallery presents "A Place of Power" - the ethnographic exhibition of Ida Ruchina's photography (on until 29 October 2017).
By Oxana Liskovaya
There's a long distance between Moscow and Chukotka, stretching in time and space, as few travellers go there. Ida Ruchina is a professional traveller and a social activist who does more than just empathise with the locals - she actually helps them catch up with the modern world that is forcing ethnic groups out of their natural habitat and culture. Her camera is always busy.
Ida's photographs are filled with feeling and energy, The exhibition is a bridge between one of the central Moscow streets to distant landscapes of Chukotka and the eyes of the local population. Don't think that you are here to look at them. If you stand still near one of the portraits, it feels like you aren't the viewer. It's the unknown boy with dark almond-shaped eyes who is looking closely at a person from a different world. A world where totemic toys have not been passed to children's hands as they've been lost forever. A world where mundane chaotic movement has almost fully devoured the ability to understand your life from beginning to end. Inconsistent mind, superficial glance, half-absorbed energy of earth, water, air, warmth, coming back to your true self; the anti-stress bumper of modern life - this is all truly fascinating to those who are looking at us from the photographs. This mutual fascination is powerful but not alarming.
Big city lines that form our everyday roadmap in a mostly vertical habitat are overpowered by the horizontal lines of Chukotka landscapes - blue intertwines with white, and white is just a pattern of fiery clothes of the omniscient spirit of Chukotka that is still guarding its children and those who come to be its children, having once seen a Chukotka sunset.
By Oxana Liskovaya
There's a long distance between Moscow and Chukotka, stretching in time and space, as few travellers go there. Ida Ruchina is a professional traveller and a social activist who does more than just empathise with the locals - she actually helps them catch up with the modern world that is forcing ethnic groups out of their natural habitat and culture. Her camera is always busy.
Ida's photographs are filled with feeling and energy, The exhibition is a bridge between one of the central Moscow streets to distant landscapes of Chukotka and the eyes of the local population. Don't think that you are here to look at them. If you stand still near one of the portraits, it feels like you aren't the viewer. It's the unknown boy with dark almond-shaped eyes who is looking closely at a person from a different world. A world where totemic toys have not been passed to children's hands as they've been lost forever. A world where mundane chaotic movement has almost fully devoured the ability to understand your life from beginning to end. Inconsistent mind, superficial glance, half-absorbed energy of earth, water, air, warmth, coming back to your true self; the anti-stress bumper of modern life - this is all truly fascinating to those who are looking at us from the photographs. This mutual fascination is powerful but not alarming.
Big city lines that form our everyday roadmap in a mostly vertical habitat are overpowered by the horizontal lines of Chukotka landscapes - blue intertwines with white, and white is just a pattern of fiery clothes of the omniscient spirit of Chukotka that is still guarding its children and those who come to be its children, having once seen a Chukotka sunset.
