November 1, 2018

“High Textile”: The art of Anastasiia Podervianska at UIA

More

“Anastasia Podervianska: High Textile.” Installation view. Image courtesy of Art at the Institute/UIA.

NEW YORK — Art at the Institute celebrated the start to its 64th season on Thursday, October 4, with an exhibition of textile wall hangings and wearable art by Kyiv-based artist Anastasiia Podervianska. Curated by Walter Hoydysh, Ph.D., director of Art at the Institute, this exhibition marks the artist’s first showing in New York. 

During the opening reception that evening, guests attended to Dr. Hoydysh’s introductory remarks of an artist’s vision as equal parts couture, choreography and fancy, showing works at the edge of art, fashion and theatre. Ms. Podervianska graciously thanked her hosts for the unique opportunity for travel and the project display of her artistry within the grand rooms of The Ukrainian Institute of America.

Textile art has long been considered the “unfortunate stepsister” of the art world. It was seen as a craft, in which emphasis was focused on the material aspect, making it unworthy as a medium of high-thinking artistic concepts. Also, the fact that it was mostly work made by women (in a male-dominant art world) did not help in raising its profile as an art form. The 1970s marked a turning point in this history. Feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro challenged the distinction between textiles and fine art, embracing techniques that were traditionally relegated to the realm of “women’s crafts,” such as sewing, quilting and weaving. Artists aligned closer to “fine art” such as Rosemarie Trockel and Louise Bourgeois’ fabric collages and objets are today marveled at in international exhibitions, prominent collections and widely recorded in art and scholarly publications.

Exploring the ambivalent status of textile as an art medium, this exhibition looks at how textile plays a central role in one artist’s practice, and how she uses it as a powerful tool for expressing ideas about culture and the aesthetic, as well as the value of the handmade in the digital age. It aspires to collapse perceived boundaries between art and craft and challenge the visitor to rethink the significance of medium in art and the role of materials in constructing meaning.

Anastasiia Podervianska, “Shinobi Koi,” 2017, Textile with hand embroidery, variable size. Image courtesy of the artist.

Redefining the history of art subjects and themes, Ms. Podervianska uses the medium of textile to subvert its aura as “woman’s work” and transforms it into colorful, ironic, lively and, if not, liberating objects of visual and critical impact. Nothing could be further from her mind than the leveling of the antiquated hierarchical relationship between serious art, craft and mass culture. She generously displays a “painterly” approach that is historical, eclectic and pluralistic.

Influenced by postmodernist ideas, the two groups of works on exhibit in the UIA’s second floor spaces — “Country Horrors and Coat Portraits” — are the products of spirited experimentation with materials and exacting technique while at the same time confronting perennial issues such as biblical and Eastern iconography, recounted characterization, national and personal identity, popular culture, and socially predetermined norms and roles. 

Ms. Podervianska salvages fabric materials from the upper as well as lower echelons of cultural history, forming fascinating narrative ensembles all the while combining her expressed commentary with certain joie de vivre. Each work is made by hand through a laborious process that begins with template drawings and fabric-cutting and ends with pinning and embroidering. Sewing and assembling by hand demands patience and time. It is a form of ritual meditation; a devotional act.

Ms. Podervianska has increasingly been known for her adept depictions of character figures constructed from legendary stories. They recall personalities from past subcultures and art historical painting, and are rendered employing stylistic references to monumental painting, Dada, Assemblage and Pop. Instead of creating complex traditional perspectival elements, she methodically layers flat ephemeral material with slow stitching within the composition that dynamically animates the viewer’s engagement.

Inspired by Yuriy Bulashev’s book, “Ukrainian People in Their Legends, Religious Views and Beliefs” (1909), the selected wall pieces identified with the “Country Horrors” grouping liberally illustrate the author’s chronicled legends. Ms. Podervianska assembles folk embroidery, fabric prints, patches and texts, as a nod to past conventions with contemporary incisive irony and sharp-witted humor. Figures from the historical past are intruded upon with printed reproductions of art historical portrait subjects and cross-cultural media darlings such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Bart Simpson. Fleeting short texts and solitary words sewn into the surface fabrics suggest nonsensical idioms confirming the degradation of social structures and cultural corruption.

From the story of Adam and Eve to the tales of St. George, humankind’s complex relationship with the natural world has been recorded here in myths and legends, many warning of dangers lurking beneath nature’s beauty. Each piece begins with symbols and tales — creation stories, accounts of heroic journeys and quests, and parables of good and evil. Mythology and art have been interwoven since before recorded history, and Ms. Podervianska’s work thoroughly explores this connection.

Modernist tenets often claimed technique to be unimportant, but this does not hold for textile art. Here, the methods practiced by Ms. Podervianska influence how the work is appreciated. They are at once naive and refined, quirky and impressive. This is the case with “Eve” (2018), which seems to have been created with makeshift proliferation but demonstrates perfect mastery of the fabric(s) as a medium. The central subject faces the viewer directly in a confrontational and open manner, arms resting on her hips, revealing a remotely sexualized floral-patterned fleshiness. Embellished with conflicting cultural relics and ideals of beauty, love and defiance surrounding the soaring figure of Eve, the work is actualized as a cheeky religious painting. Its scene condenses the artist’s time spent working in the studio potentially over weeks, yet we also imagine it as a story of her playing roulette with posterity.

The corresponding “Coat Portraits” display embroidered copies of historical art luminaries and subjects on robes designed and sewn by couturier, Lilia Bratus. Having previously created costumes for her father’s — poet and playwright Les Poderviansky — absurd theatrical performances, the artist turns clothing into a restless art. These “wearable paintings” are to be donned and the bearer is encouraged to bring these textiles to life through their active change; a moveable feast.

Looking from a different angle, Ms. Podervianska’s work can be understood as a kind of visual poetry. We established that her work contains narrative elements. Not really complete stories, with a beginning, a storyline and an end. On the contrary, the narrative structures are used here as a form of communication with the viewer. The viewer might assemble the stories to produce chronological and causal structures. Actually, they might even step into the role of the “author.” It can become a kind of play between the viewer and Ms. Podervianska. Her sense of humor is typical for her Slavic background: a mixture of a laughing and tearing. 

She loves textiles because of the tactile looks. Textile has a more intimate relationship with the viewer and is, therefore, very suitable to communicate emotions. She looks toward the narrative-decorative and illustrative use of unconventional materials as the vehicle for a provocative array of her designs, symbols and messages. She holds our interest in incorporating fabric and hand-embroidery in her art because we as viewers feel comfortable and familiar with these materials — they conjure memories and associations that are personal, even intimate — and because of the symbolic connotations they explore and reference.

These works are embedded in art history to such an extent that one might assume each has a certain antecedent, but this is not necessarily the case. The likenesses that are aspired to are not based on actual persons but are triggered by an aggregation of faces from the past and present (hers included). She creates her own world of archetypes, in which the characters seem to be related across the fabric wall hangings. It seems as if they created one another, as if the figures of one fabric piece were working on other pieces in the show.

Much of the pleasure from looking at these works comes from deciphering the symbols and historical references. The is main source of inspiration is human life and the myths, legends, stories and symbols that give history and life meaning. Her works are not an attempt to make the themes more accessible. Placing more demands on the viewer is an indication of the confidence she gains. Imprints of the ages and in our minds, signs and traces and their meanings for us, their personal and social narratives are the focus of her interest.

This exhibition has a physical presence that is far more persuasive than any verbal description, making the pieces seem larger than they are. They look wonderful when viewed from a distance, and when viewed close up reveal technical intricacies that make each fabric work something really quite special. Ultimately, Ms. Podervianska aims to impress, overwhelm and fascinate, with an explicit commitment to the functional and conceptual character of art and its process, showing an intuitive feeling for the specific qualities of material. She leads us into a completely unfamiliar place, and the results are revelatory.

Ms. Podervianska is a graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Department of Monumental Painting), in Kyiv. She has exhibited with Dymchuk Gallery Mystetskyi Arsenal, Tryptych Gallery, and White World Gallery, among other contemporary venues. Her textile pieces were featured by Voloshyn Gallery (Kyiv) at the 2017 running of SCOPE Miami Beach and the 2018 edition of Vienna Contemporary. She is represented in private and institutional collections in Ukraine, Germany, Poland and the U.S.A. Ms. Podervianska lives and works in Kyiv.

“Anastasiia Podervianska: High Textile” remains on view at the Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 E. 79th St., through November 11.  Exhibition hours are Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. or by appointment. For further information, contact Olena Sidlovych, executive director, at 212-288-8660.

Comments are closed.