THE TRAVEL ŒUVRE

Travel, a unique and specific experience

For a long time, artists have travelled, taking structured trips or just roaming, a source of enrichment aimed at renewing the forms of their art. As Anton Chekhov wrote in Travel to Sakhalin: "by reading, looking around me and listening, I will discover and learn a great deal". For everyone, Chekhov, Cendrars, Gauguin, Pirosmani Hamish Fulton, Richard Long and all the others, travel proves to be a unique, specific experience. Epitomising travel as an exotic discovery would be like eliminating all its abilities to develop territory-building strategies. Travel enabled me to accept my dual membership of the Russian and French nations, but above all, it enabled me to tackle the question of the movement of substance, a fundamental question in attempting to shed a new light on drawing and sculpture. The presentation I am giving, illustrated by a few works, touches on both these aspects.

Travel as a way of roaming

I have not, like Baudelaire in L’ invitation au voyage, hoped for "the pleasure of going there to live together". For me, travel is dominated by a roaming logic, going nowhere, and absence. I remain incapable of answering the question: where can I feel at home?

I was born in France to exiled Russian parents. I spent part of my life trying to reconstruct a background devastated by events that did not belong to me: war, deportation, exile, the early death of my father. My life had to begin, but not that life full of deprivation. I was waiting for the other life, which would be marked by an active vitality and would allow me to overcome the inevitability of fate. In the absurd, gratuitous act of creation, I found the meaning I wanted to give to my life. In one of his letters to Gorky, Chekhov observed one day: "you write, because you find nobody in and there’s nothing else to do".

Building up my territory with a series of positions, line and colours takes me right into the heart of my compound identity, Russian and French. This identity has formed the contours of my personality, has forged my behaviour and my opinions. An early trip to the Soviet Union in 1976, the first of many, really gave me the opportunity to view my identity as being constructed from diverse and sometimes contradictory contributions and influences. In 1981, with a performance entitled La maison mobile, I tackled the themes of possession and renunciation, of roots and being uprooted. Step by step I attempted to construct a grammar on the borders of my two countries, my two languages, my two cultural traditions. Far from fashions and trends, I realised that my compound identity imposes its own rhythm on me. Since the retrospective in 2006 at the Musée de Tournai in Belgium, celebrating twenty-five years of my creative work, I have seen this rhythm pulsing from one work to the next.

Travel relating to time and movement

My compound identity imposes its own rhythm on me. From the middle of the 1980s, I began to develop an aesthetic of slowness, before developing an aesthetic of mobility. No work should be dictated by external factors. Everything I have created over the past twenty-five years reflects the reality of the world that is mine, between East and West, immoderation and rationality. The decision to develop an aesthetic of slowness has led me to think about the question of time, that mysterious element with its problematic, unusual nature. Time that lodges in my body like an experience, time as a state, the lack of time in contemporary life, the sensation of time passing, the consistency of time, its intensity or on the contrary its dilution. I would observe later that space too is capable of inducing a form of internal dilution. Confronted in 2006 with the immensity of the Siberian territory, I experienced that state of oblivion and dilution that one feels most frequently from the continuity of time. To develop my aesthetic of slowness, I surrounded myself with materials that could produce the emotional impacts I was seeking. I chose soft materials, materials that could be woven, folded, intertwined. I am certain that movement comes from within the material and not from an external form that is only there to illustrate the movement. Circular time or rectilinear time? I approached these questions by producing two sculptures. In the 1989 sculpture entitled Le faux tapis, a woven cord is rolled around itself until it reaches a diameter of 5m50. In 1990 I produced La ligne de temps, a straight line about 6 metres long formed of thousands of clothes pegs and thread. The mistake we often make is to think that movement is situated in the space to be covered when in fact it is the act of covering it, the gesture. The search for the gesture in its consciousness of the internal and external realities was the challenge facing all choreographers who, from Martha Graham to Merce Cunningham and including Alvin Nicolais, rebelled against the formalism and rigidity of classical ballet. I have also taken a great interest in other forms of artistic expression. As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze emphasised, "It is all a question of line, there is no great difference between painting, music and writing. These activities differ by virtue of their substances, their codes and their respective territorialities, but not by the abstract line that they trace, which runs between them and carries them towards a common destiny".

Travel from one territory to another

My dual nationality has often enabled me to play with the meaning of words. Thus, the Russian word "daroga" means both road and travel, and the verb "pissat" means to write, in the sense of writing a letter and painting a picture. Throughout my œuvre, there is this interpenetration of drawing and writing. This question is apparent in all the wall drawings and in the embroidered drawings of 2003 entitled Les gourmands.

The work Le salon de lecture, done between 1998 and 2000, also illustrates my wish to break down the walls between different territories while mingling different times and spaces. For two years, I corresponded with the French artistic community. I suggested that they give their views freely on a variety of subjects. Without being aware of it, the participants were at the very heart of the creative process. I published these exchanges of views in the form of booklets entitled Conversation 1,2,3,4,5. Subsequently, I put these writings on the exhibition circuit in the form of an arrangement comprising twenty-six drawings, armchairs and a low table, so that the conversation booklets could be read in a comfortable manner.

Travel in unusual materials

In 1916, Marcel Duchamp presented Sculpture de voyage, a folding sculpture devised with strips of coloured rubber cut out from swimming caps, as well as Pliant de voyage, the flexible black cover of a typewriter. The question of travel is a hallmark of Duchamp’s work. By introducing supple materials that can be bent out of shape, he produces a new form of art, changing and flexible. Years later, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse and the artists of l’Arte Povera endowed substance with its true value. My œuvre is situated in the continuity of this questioning of substance, in my intention to dispute the solid, durable character of productions. Touching in their modesty, their weaknesses and their imperfections, these substances constantly remind us that man’s efforts are futile. Anyone who has read Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov knows that his laziness implies a philosophical vision of life that can be summed up as follows: if the end of everything is death, why bother?

During the 1980s, I introduced into my œuvre poor products such as textiles and thread. The artists of l’Arte Povera have already used these materials but they tend to have a strong anti-establishment and political power that I do not have. My art does not serve any propaganda or protest purposes, not feminist, not political, not social. At the same time, I believe that art that stems from deep personal experiences expresses all that without needing to highlight a particular effect. The reason I am close to certain artists like Alighiero e Boetti, is because we each approach the question of our double in our own way. In one of his photographic columns, you see him holding out his hand to his double. As for me, I weave a story between Boldyreff the Frenchwoman and Boldireva the Russian. We also have a common interest in the question of the process, not just the finished object. John Cage’s writings have already introduced me to the questions of process and incompletion. He being a fine mycologist has enabled me to evoke a basket full of mushrooms and mushroom gathering. In other words, the process and the work of art.

My decision to use supple materials for my drawings and sculptures as much as possible stems from the importance of travelling in my œuvre. The works must be folded and unfolded, rolled up and unrolled, put together and taken apart. I established an aesthetic of mobility at the end of the 1980s.

At the same time, I continued my exploration of the immaterial permeated with spirituality. At the beginning of the 1990s, I introduced fire into my drawings. Yves Klein has already looked into this subject, but unlike his fire paintings, spectacular and provocative, my promenade-drawings are in withdrawal. They are concerned, like thread and textiles in other productions, with the capacity of fire to create movement within. Robert Morris, with his Wall Hanging, wonderfully evoked this ability of the substance to determine form. The œuvre of Eva Hesse, who freely uses all sorts of unusual materials, bent out of shape and perishable, is also based around this questioning, sometimes going as far as putting a decorative game in her latest works.

Travel in unusual techniques

Not only am I keen to introduce unconventional materials into my work, I also take pleasure in diverting techniques.

As Louise Bourgeois did in the 1950s, in 1985 I began production on twenty-seven tangle-drawings. I diverted the technique of engraving on linoleum and drew blind on the ink-coated plate. Drawing blind enabled me to introduce accidents, chance, the unexpected. In appearance, the effect remains similar to engraving but when I linger on it, I notice differences that have the effect of disturbing our perception and moving towards a new emotional vision. These twenty-seven tangle-drawings are enigmatic. Formed of a large number of lines, they give rise to a number of forms, some of which suggest landscapes. In this series, the line is a metaphor for the thread. A little later, in the series of six Faux monochromes in 1987, a work that is completely embroidered in satin stitch, I finally raise embroidery, a technique generally considered banal and insignificant, to the level of art. By attacking in this way monochrome, the history of which punctuates all avant-garde work, from Rodchenko’s first monochromes in 1921, and including Newman and Klein, I know in advance that my path, running counter to any conservatism, will sometimes be misunderstood. However, the aim of the artist is not to be understood or misunderstood, it is to build a territory, a world that is his or hers. The exploration of a new cartography took shape at the end of the 1980s with wall drawing. Wall drawing is formed of a cord woven like French knitting during trips. The special feature of this design is to evoke the starting point and to establish a relationship with the outside world. It is vital to absorb the construction of a wall drawing in its entirety. Taking out one detail during the process is like amputating a piece of the œuvre, or worse, generating a misunderstanding, as was the case on several occasions concerning performances during which the cord was woven. My performances are not aimed at generating contact, as was the case with Lygia Clark, most of whose works examine the sense of touch. My performances need to be clandestine to convey their force. They need secrecy and not the harsh light of day. The issue is solitude, solitude in the midst of other people. They are done surreptitiously, generally on trains. Not being able to drive, I always use public transport and I prefer going by train. No doubt because the train has always played a part in Russian imagination, a place of freedom. You get on and you travel in comfort for days and days. And sometimes, as was the case on board the Trans-Siberian railway, you find you no longer notice the evening succeeding the afternoon which itself followed the morning. My love of the idea of furtiveness in performance goes back to my years studying at the Beaux Arts. At the end of the 1970s, I discovered the artist André Cadere, with his coloured stick that he abandoned all over the place. These actions affected me deeply. I then thought I could extend this type of concept in my own way. I had to wait several years before adopting the French knitting technique and, between 1993 and 1994, executing Les petits abandons. This involved doing the French knitting, during a trip, then abandoning my work, having first taken a photograph of the abandoned knitting and noting the place, the day, hour and year of the abandonment. Each abandoned work was arranged in such a way as to give people the idea that it could be picked up by a stranger passing by. This œuvre, evoking wandering, comprises forty-nine black and white photographs with captions.

In their wanderings, my performances cause interference in places that are not specifically attributed to art. The wall drawings that I create with woven cord during my travelling performances are filled with wandering, incompletion and a joyous form of insubordination. In both content and form, wall drawings retain an elusive, nomadic aspect. From 1996 to 2001, I travelled through fifteen countries and produced fifteen wall drawings. The work is entitled L’enlèvement. There is therefore the time of travelling and knitting, the moment of the fleeting encounter with an anonymous person who will take a photo of my performance. Back at the studio, it is time to prepare the drawing on paper which will then be used as a template for the final drawing on the wall. The wall drawing is made and taken apart continuously. Always on the move, it is deployed on the wall for an exhibition then stored away in a ball in its box once the exhibition is over.

The wall drawing is ambiguous. On the one hand, it has an almost childlike simplicity, on the other hand it has links with conceptual art and post-minimalism. In addition to these two sources of influence, there is Russian popular imagery. As Larionov, Goncharova and Malevitch have done, basing their work on Russian popular imagery, I myself have been strongly affected by the Loubok style, simple harmonious lines, schematized attitudes, bright colours. Beyond the fact of endeavouring to express the infinite and the elusive, the wall drawing is also imbued with a form of spirituality that I express in another way with the promenade-drawings.

At the beginning of the 1990s, I introduced a new instrument hijacked from its habitual use. This was a pyrography tool with which I draw directly on the paper and canvas by burning it. The use of this instrument introduces momentary time. An obligatory speed of execution if I am not to see my drawing go up in smoke. These drawings have a new energy, stemming from the spiritual charge of the fire. The drawing appears out of the disappearance of the burnt substance. The burnt line no longer plays the part of a border between the form and the outside world. There is an interpenetration between interior and exterior. With these drawings that reveal the form by eliminating the substance, I let myself approach the figure of the absent father, who died as I was born. This evocation links me subtly to my past. Whatever the horizons I draw, no human figure is visible, as if only absence was able to fill the void. All my sculptures also convey this absence and the body in withdrawal: Chaise nomade St-Pétersbourg (2004), Chaise nomade Hasselt (2005), Les absents (2004), Les invisibles (2004-2005), Moïa Zolotaïa (2005) and more recently Les traversées (2006-2008). This work, composed of fifteen sculptures linked by a thread, evokes my crossing of Siberia in 2006. These sculptures express immensity, solitude and solidarity. These textile sculptures convey a strong idea of softness and suppleness, the primacy of sagging over solid.

My sculptures, like my drawings, are very pared down. I am constantly eliminating everything I do not need and only keeping what is essential. John Cage, once again, enabled me to reinject materials and techniques sometimes scorned or neglected by the language of contemporary art. It is interesting to see to what extent these materials and techniques always give rise to new questions.

By refusing to confine my drawings and sculptures within the conventional boundaries of a genre traditionally considered as a major Fine Arts segment, I endeavour to give drawing and sculpture a new angle through what is soft, supple and pliable. Materials and techniques that also help me to maintain a living link with my dual culture.

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