Maria Pleshkova: Innerscapes
© Maria Pleshkova
Mirrors, Ghosts and Shadows
The VASA exhibition by Moscow based Russian artist Maria Pleshkova presents three bodies of work: “Afterlove”, “Limbo” and “Days of War: A Pillow Book”. The exhibition presents each collection in three different formats: videos, still images and books. In doing so she invites us, as readers, to step back and consider a number of presentational elements in relationship to her images and their impact on our reading of her work as iconic and metaphoric. Simply, the experience of a video, a book and single images demand different actions by the reader, constructs the possibility for different understandings and results in different meanings.
Within the borders of each body of work she invites us to experience a symbolic and metaphoric journey. As with any collection or series, it is the experience, the individual and shared readings (meanings) of the work that is the result of our inquiry. I refer to “shared readings” from the perspective that the author/artist encodes their experience to be read first by them (it is part of the editing process), and second by an agreeable viewer (compared to a disinterested pedestrian) who decodes (and recodes) the codifications, the image inbetween the author and the reader. Here the reception may vary from the intended one to an individualized-centric experience. The process of reading, of encoding/decoding, the construction and reception, is directed towards the public and private. By public I refer to the shared readings by an audience who is defined by culture, experience, age, gender, geography and economics. Within these constructs meanings are fluid and historical.
Evident throughout her work is the appearance or the ideation of a mirror image. References to Jacque Lacan, the mirror stage in human development, the recognition of the other, the ego, come to the surface. The mirror image is an objectification of the other. The subject is objectified and then re-subjectified within the reader’s framework. The other, analyzed and questioned, lies within the deep secrets of the subjectivity. We are invited to look into her mirror and read her text as we experience the absence of love (Afterlove), a loved one going to a distant war (Days of War: A Pillow Book), and being in the quiet dead space of waiting (Limbo). (image © Stefania Zorzi)
All photographs are mirror images of what is outside, the objective world, and inside, a subjective mirror of contemplation and expression. The work of Eva Petric, Stefania Zorzi, Lucas Samaras, Pleshkova, in concert with millions of “selfies” provide examples of the constructed “other” for consumption. Considering the “selfie” phenomenon, where millions of self-representations embody the notion that "I" exist and this is how "I" want to be seen, pull their meanings from the social world of shared experiences and pictorial readings to the inner self. Artist, it appears, usually frame themselves as dark, bringing forth the pain and anguish within their perceived self.
In some instances artists do not perform differently from the instagram selfie; they know what they are doing as they combine elements, props and gestures together to construct their self-image. Images are intentionally constructed/codified, framed and disseminated in an attempt “say” something. What they “say” is another question. A question answered through the articulation of historical reference, social position and epistemological constructs. (A reference to Erving Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” may be useful here.) (image right © Eva Petric, 2013)
At the point where imagery moves from the private to the public through exhibitions, postings and books; the personal transcends to the social. (Harbermas refers to moving from the room, the window sill, to the street) I am not convinced that any exhibition is personal, for the author has made it public. If it were personal, then the work would not be made available for a general reading. We all have secrets, closets if you will, with personal meanings, memories and contexts. It is rare that we open our closet doors for inspection and consumption by unknown others. The visitor in the gallery, the reader of a video or a book, will never digest the author’s encoded meanings. Readers bring their own contexts to consume and translate what they think they see. The challenge to authors (visual and print) is to move beyond common codifications to complex and dimensional challenges.
The three bodies of work in this exhibition invites the viewer to look into their own mirror. Who has not suffered the loss of a love, said farewell to a loved one embarking on a dangerous mission, or feels her life is on hold, in limbo. Maria asks the viewer of “Afterlove” to recognize their own history when she writes: “Losing love is painful, and many people try to escape from pain and other strong emotions in any affordable form of anesthesia. In this project I consciously investigate the emotions, giving them a visual and symbolic shape.” It is here that Maria invites us into our closets, to experience the imagined monsters feasting on a lost love. To visualize pain and loss she takes us to place that we may not want to be in our own closet. (above image: © Maria Pleshkovs, Limbo)
“Limbo”, like the other works in this exhibition places existence on hold. To experience this work the viewer (reader) needs to become silent, allowing the space between the images to speak. The film within “Limbo” is built upon the emblematic relationship between the framed images and not the individual image as presented in the “Limbo” exhibition. The viewer has no choice but to bring their experiences to the spaces between the flow of images. In the book format I suggest that meaning evolves between the pages.
The “Days of War: A Pillow Book” is a lovers story told in the same fashion as the other works in the exhibition. The video, the images and the book build upon the reader’s empathy with the author’s perceived experience. It is a story played out for us.
All three works in this exhibition are stories. Private stories on lost loves and being alone. As a collective the work of Maria Pleshkova taps into our emotional shadows through books, images and videos.
Photography has a unique position to transform the object, the external image, into a subject, the image understood. In this manner we can consider all photographs as mirrors, reflections of the self, as moments of decision revealing the ghost within. Maria Pleshkova provides the readers of her images, texts to be understood, giving access to their own mirrors and shadows.
© Roberto Muffoletto, 2021
© Mariia Plushkova, Limbo