MishMash

Day by Day

MishMash group

Day by Day

Curator: Maria Lavrova

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents the exhibition ‘Day by Day’ by the MishMash group (Misha Leykin and Masha Sumnina). The MishMash creative and marital duo continually develops the traditions of Russian Conceptualism and rates among the most famous Russian artists. According to Cosmoscow Art Fair, in 2019 they were named Artist of the Year. In 2011 our museum showcased a solo exhibition by MishMash, ‘See You’, featuring the installation ‘Be Softer. Be Harder’. Part of this installation was included in the MAMM collection. The museum has also shown MishMash works in its projects outside Russia.

In the new work shown at this exhibition, ‘Over&over’, MishMash continue their ironic play with layers of materials and meanings. The English word ‘over’ has several different meanings: ‘above’, ‘again’, ‘during’, ‘in the course of’. This project is linked by a common idea to other MishMash oeuvres — the observation of change.

Every day starting from 1 January 2021 the artists have wrapped a wooden figure shaped like the numeral ‘one’ in all sorts of ‘clothing’ made from fabrics, paper, leaves and medical masks, increasing it layer by layer. According to the MishMash concept this unique performance will last exactly one year. The result will be one object and 365 of its intermediate forms, which can only be seen in photographs. Every day MishMash posts a snapshot of the updated object on their social networks (Instagram: @mishmash.ru). The audience becomes not just witnesses, but also participants in the process. In this way, according to the theory of quantum physics, the observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes it. MishMash say the project has turned into a daily web series, with its own loyal fans and critics. Although neither they nor the authors themselves can imagine what the finale will be.

The MAMM exhibition presents photo documentation of the object in real dimensions, as it exists each day. A space of empty white sheets has been left at the exhibition, to be filled with new images of the changing sculpture. Every Friday throughout the exhibition, the installation will be updated to show how the object has been transformed day by day over the past week. In January 2022 the completed object will be displayed at MAMM.

MishMash’s creativity is characterised by their connection with personal biography, with the theme of the past and its material traces. The ‘Over&over’ project was no exception. The idea for its creation arose in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and during a strict lockdown. For the first time in their entire life together the artists were compelled to spend more than a year apart. According to Masha Sumnina, work helped them cope with ‘loneliness and expectation’. During this period the artist was intrigued by ‘the theme of the duration and compression of time, how it can be counted, swallowed, crumpled and stretched.’

‘Last year there was enough time to think about time,’ says Masha. ‘How layering it turns shock into routine, as if you’re processing it internally, but with difficulty, how it softens sharp corners, how everything around you counts time from one juncture to another.’

Conceptual reflections on the essence of time produced Masha Sumnina’s graphic cycle ‘Compulsive Counting’’, shown in MAMM at the exhibition ‘A Shadow of the Soul, but Slightly Sharper’, and the MishMash countdown project ‘Over&over’, which Masha defines as a kind of ‘penance’, a way to transform experiences through artistic experiments with incompatible materials and techniques. Day by day each new layer of the object covers and thereby destroys the previous one, although MishMash perceive the destruction of their works not as a tragic event, but as the opportunity to follow time and change with it, letting go of the past.

As it develops, our civilisation destroys the past, layering the new over the old; every passing day changes each one of us, and these minor changes form our personality. After all, time is the main category of our existence, and the clever, subtle and funny but serious exhibition-performance by MishMash is an exploration of this philosophical essence. 

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