Daria Melnikova
Yesterday Is
The New Tomorrow
Сurated by Alexander Burenkov
20 March 2017
Daria Melnikova's collaboration with ISSMAG gallery coincides with her one of the first trips to Moscow, where she will use the whole city as an artistic medium – contemporary Moscow architecture will act as a witness of time reflecting cultural and political processes and changes in lifestyle of people of different generations. In tourist photos the crooked huts of Terekhovo village coexist organically with skyscrapers of Moscow, city in the background, so do an elderly woman and her teenage grandson who are forced to live in one apartment. Presenting modern Moscow as a collage of contrasting architectural styles, technologies and values, Melnikova will create an installation from elements typical to traditional Russian wooden architecture – twisted columns, carvings, balusters – combined with modern materials – plastic, metal and concrete, searching for a possibility of a harmonious dialogue and a joint way forward, impossible without continuity of traditions.
In 2015, Daria Melnikova was the first laureate of kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, having won a two-month residency at the Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art KW. Justifying their choice, participants of the international jury of the prize Alessio Antoniolli and Robert Leckey described the artist's language: "Daria Melnikova achieves a balance between visually impeccable and intriguing, between manual work and mass production.