Anna Lyalina

F=mg

AS PART OF THE XIII MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL MONTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY
«PHOTOBIENNALE – 2020»

PRESENT THE EXHIBITION

Anna Lyalina
F=mg

Rodchenko Art School at MAMM

4 September 2020 — 18 October 2020

Anna Lyalina, a graduate of the Rodchenko Art School (Project Photography workshop headed by Vladislav Efimov), often turns in her art to the themes of borderline states and conventions associated with social or administration norms, psycho-emotional taboos and the physical boundaries of the individual.

The exhibition presents a video documentation of the artist’s performance ‘F=mg’, in which the artist explores the phenomenon of ‘constant efforts many times exceeding the result’. In a visual metaphor Lyalina uses an educational game for children of 6 months or older that is designed to develop mental functions: perception, thinking, attention. As part of the performance the artist must build a tower from a set of cubes in five colours measuring 10 x 10 centimetres. The artist deliberately included an irrational element in this process that changed the rules of the game, adding absurd conditions — the ‘construction’ of this tower had to be achieved with a clumsy forklift loader weighing 4 tons. 

In the work ‘F=mg’ the artist constructs an ambivalent situation in which her performance can, on the one hand, be seen as a psychotherapeutic experience or act of meditation based on repeated manipulations and requiring extreme concentration. On the other hand, it can be regarded as a reference to the philosophical myth of Sisyphus, which tells of the futility of effort and the absurdity of human existence. As soon as the artist comes close to completing what appears at first sight a simple task, she is compelled each time to begin the process all over again. Lyalina’s project reveals the paradox of a discrepancy between effort exerted and the end result. In the course of a two-hour performative action the artist suffered acute poisoning from exhaust fumes (two other people had mild poisoning); she broke through the wall of the gallery and assembled just 7 cubes. Three of the 10 cubes were crushed.

The project was named after a formula used to calculate what force should be applied to mass for movement with acceleration. We are left with an open question: is it possible in the conditions of a fragile, unstable world order to determine the quantity and quality of effort necessary to achieve a desired result, or is this possibility limited by our insurmountable dependence on external circumstances?

Anna Lyalina was born in Tula in 1991. She lives and works in Moscow and Vladimir. In 2019 she graduated from the Rodchenko Art School (Vladislav Efimov’s Project Photography workshop). She is involved in the genres of performance, intervention, partisanship (changing the urban environment through street art) and public art. Lyalina is a member of the art groups К210 (self-organised centre of contemporary art team, Vladimir, 2019), and Untitled (with Maxim Amelchenko, from 2019 to the present). She has participated in more than 40 exhibitions in Moscow, Vladimir, Tula, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladivostok and Bologna, including ‘Band of Omission’ (Cube Moscow, AZOT Gallery, Osnova Gallery, 2020); ‘OUT. Outside’ (Trading Rows, Vladimir, 2019); ‘Simple Feelings’ (NCCA Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod, 2017); ‘World Machine’ (Tula History and Architecture Museum, 2017). Curator of the exhibition ‘Peace Time’ at the Gorky Park Museum (2020) and the ‘Clean Field’ land-art festival and laboratory in Vladimir (2019). Since 2018 she has taught Media Art at RUDN (People’s Friendship University of Russia) and RANEPA (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration).