Alisa Gorshenina
Alisa Gorshenina (alice hualice) (born in the village of Yakshina, Sverdlovsk region). Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nizhny Tagil State Social and Pedagogical Institute (a branch of the Russian State Professional and Pedagogical University). Practices working in various media (painting, graphics, ceramics, textile sculpture, video, animation, photography, digital collage). The area of interest is not limited to a specific range of topics and plots, although in essence the plot is the same: “I”, placed in the space of the language of art. According to the artist, when trying to somehow designate the vector of thought or to determine a specific area of action, the specificity and the very meaning of the story in the language of art are lost. This language is visual – without words and definitions, filled with many personal symbols, which the artist invites both the viewer and herself to unravel. Until 2016, she was a member of the Tagil art group SecondHand. Lives and works in Nizhny Tagil.
Publications:
Coeval Magazine , The Calvert Journal , Another Magazine , Harper’s Bazaar Russia , GARAGE vice , Sleek Magazine , The Blueprint , Wonderzine , AWAKE Revue , The Village and others.
The documentary film “Ural Coma” from the Red Pepper Film studio.
- 2021 – Nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in the category “Young Artist. Project of the Year “.
- 2019/2020 season – Participant of the grant program to support young artists of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow.
- 2019 – Nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in the category “Young Artist. Project of the Year “.
- 2018 – Winner of the Takeoff at VDNKh program, Moscow.
Personal exhibitions:
- 2021 – IGO Family Exhibition, New Sincerity Gallery, Moscow.
- 2020 – “Self-Art”, ART4 Museum, Moscow.
- 2019 – “Russian foreign”, Yakshina village.
- 2019 – “Born to be art / født for å være kunst”, House of Artists, Nizhny Tagil.
- 2018 – “Uralskaya skin”, VDNKh, Pavilion No. 16, Moscow.
- 2018 – “Dowry”, gallery “Larina”, Krasnodar.
- 2017 – “Travel by the mammary gland”, apartment number 39, Nizhny Tagil.
- 2016 – “4” of the Second Hand art group, MICHURIN space, Novouralsk.
- 2016 – “Tochka” of the Second Hand art group, Department of Contemporary Art, Togliatti Art Museum, Togliatti.
- 2015 – “UZPI” of the Second Hand art group, Gorky House of Culture, Nizhny Tagil.
- 2015 – “Ural coma”, Space Place gallery, Nizhny Tagil.
- 2015 – SECONDHAND of the Second Hand art group, within the framework of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale, Krasnogvardeets cinema, Nizhny Tagil.
Selected group exhibitions:
- 2021 – IGO Family Exhibition, New Sincerity Gallery, Moscow.
- 2020 – 2nd Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art “Beautiful Night of All People”, Garage Museum, Moscow.
- 2020 – “Russian fairy tale. From Vasnetsov until now”, New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
- 2019 – ARS UNA, Every Woman Biennal, Rhythm Visuals Gallery, Los Angeles.
- 2019 – Festival “Archetype of the Future”, NCCA, Saratov.
- 2019 – “Local”, NCCA, Yekaterinburg.
- 2018 – “Everything is not what it seems”, NCCA, Yekaterinburg.
- 2018 – “Properties of bodies”, Bursa gallery, Kiev.
- 2018 – “What are you talking about”, Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Yekaterinburg.
- 2017 – “The work is never finished”, a special project of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennale, Museum Complex. AND I. Slovtsova, Tyumen.
- 2017-2019 – “Taming the Emptiness. 50 Years of Contemporary Art of the Urals”, NCCA (Yekaterinburg), NCCA (Moscow), NCCA Arsenal (Nizhny Novgorod), NCCA (Samara), Center for Urban Culture (Perm).
- 2017 – 1st Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art, Garage Museum, Moscow.
- 2016 – “Non-random connections”, NCCA, Yekaterinburg.
- 2016 – “Bazhov Fest. New Ural mythologies”, NCCA (Yekaterinburg), Center for Urban Culture, (Perm).
- 2015 – 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, Space Place Gallery (Nizhny Tagil), Iset Hotel, Yekaterinburg.
All author's works
Series
Alisa Gorshenina builds her own personal mythology, drawing inspiration from folk culture and unconscious arbitrary associations. An important source of creative energy and imagery for her is free experimentation and play; she invents neologisms and describes the content of her work with reference to metaphors of corporeality and motifs of the spiritual journey. This is what she says of the “Huarealism” series: “Here I am dividing myself into 7 equal Alisas and playing “ring-around-the-rosy” with myself. Here I am enlarging myself to the size of the highest mountain in the Urals and laying down in the forest as if in the grass. Here I am a spaceship, able to fly anywhere, to overcome any universe. I choose the one I like by color, look for the best planet and take all the stars from its sky, put them in my pocket, and instead I place my own sun in the sky, I just sewed it yesterday. Now I have my own planet, for there is my star there now. Here I am becoming a rag doll with six arms, standing on a shelf and realizing what it is like to be a man-made object. Here I am drawing a mermaid’s tail on a summer photograph, and in the same instance I am in the sea, cutting through the waves like a fish. Here I am dancing and splitting into atoms and becoming music. I am lying on the Moon, looking at the Earth and wondering what people are doing there now.”
Alienated
Series
Language experimentation is one of Alisa Gorshenina’s key creative methods. In order to define her artistic practice, she invents the term “Russian Alienated” to symbolize both a commitment to local identity, folklore motifs and the detachment of a young artist currently living in Nizhny Tagil. “Russian Alienated” is not so much a series as a creative manifesto, but images of folk culture such as lace, tiles, scarves and sarafans are put together into a kind of selfie-amalgam: they appear in the artist’s self-portraits, constructing her problematic, bricolage identity. In her interviews she defines it this way: “A lot of people think that ‘Russian Alienated’ is something apocalyptic, something about the confrontation between the Russian people and modernity, about all of us and about Russia. But it’s not at all my style to raise such global themes, so ‘Russian Alienated’ is about me.” This new, subjective perception of national and cultural identity becomes a sign of a very special, individualistic patriotism.