gluklya + tsaplya
biography
The Factory of Found Clothing (Gluklya and Tsaplya), also known as FNO, is a group that was founded in 1996 by two Petersburg artists, Natalia Persina-Yakimanskaya (Gluklya) and Olga Egorova (Tsaplya). The group's work examines the gender problematic in various media such as performances, environmental works, installations, films and various forms of collective work (seminars, lectures, workshops, etc.) Gluklya and Tsaplya are members of the workgroup Chto delat/What is to be done?
http://www.chtodelat.org
Our project began as a seminar with five girls, at which we discussed key words from a quote of the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire. The seminar resulted in a video and a collection of clothes dedicated to these phrases. The clothes were made by the girls, as in the basic principle in most projects by the FNO Shop of Utopian Clothing.
Gluklya was born in 1969 in Leningrad where she continues to live and work. She graduated from the Mukhina Academy of Art and Design in 1991.
Tsaplya was born in 1968 in Khabarovsk. She attended The Repin Academy of Art in St. Petersburg where she continues to live and work.
manifesto
The place of the artist is on the side of the weak.
Weakness makes a person human, and it is by overcoming weakness that heroes are born.
We do not extol weakness, but rather appeal to kindheartedness and humanity. The time has come to return compassion to art!
Compassion is an understanding of the weakness of others and a joint victory over that weakness. You cannot call it sentimentality.
It is Freedom standing on the barricade with naked breast, defending the child in each of us!
You say that art is only for the very smart, that it’s an intellectual game? That there is no place left for true impact, that strong emotions belong exclusively to Hollywood? It’s not true! Because in that case, art would be meaningless, cold, incapable of extending a helping hand.
Art is not an abstract game but an adventure; not cold rationalism, but live emotion. The artist is not a mentor or tutor, but a friend; not a genius, but an accomplice. Rather than enacting didactic social projects, we must help people to stop fearing themselves, help them to accept themselves and grow better. Society is made up of people. Only by helping these people follow the path of self transformation, do we change society.
There is no other way.
FR- Manifeste (13 KB)
portraits
YOUR PORTRAIT
Project by the Factory of Found Clothing (FFC)
Why does man seem to want to possess his own portrait? Desire for immortality? Self-love?
Evidently. But this desire also has a direction. For a long time man has been portrayed by the exterior gaze.
The desire to create extracts itself from the ego and of seeing oneself, one and one's existence, from another viewpoint perhaps the most beautiful human trait, although it has not yet been fully explored. What are the chances for those that do not possess a curiosity of this kind to profoundly and truly love? Over many centuries, artists have made portraits of their contemporaries, but how is this possible today?
Clearly, one who sits immobile in an artist's studio in front of an artist in a beret cannot translate today's cataclysms. This is why we invite you to use an entirely new method of creation for your portrait. Communication appears to us to be a link that often fails in life. It often is not about a discovery, but about a constant in the character, made immortal by philosophers, writers, poets, and artists. This is why communication plays an important role in our project.
Our project is justifiably devoted to the art of the relationship to the other and to the comprehension of this relationship. To speak properly, we invite you to throw yourself into an adventure at the end of which an unexpected glance towards YOU waits for you, and looks inside you. A glance from outside, and not from within, it promises an apparent discovery that communicates to you the discovery that comes from his lover when this communicates to you something that you did not know about yourself, that is far from being flattering but is closer to reality, something that can be used like an object for understanding yourself, from an unexpected point of view, which can bring to you the joy or pain of rebirth, but which will not lie to you for profit of its own purposes. In other words, the portrait is that which belies the research of that which is hidden and the interior of man from under his deceptive surface. These are the traps set up by our self-love: to overcome them is the purpose of the creation of our portrait. We invite you to throw yourself into this adventure, in creating for you a psychological portrait based on an item of clothing that will result in your inside-out portrait, your portrait unlike any that you have seen, yet depicting how you are in reality. The successful portrait demanded of you makes a victory of yourself, or at least the courage to regard it in a critical fashion. This is an important function of art, which can help us overcome this state of ourselves and society, and that according to the wise observation by Michel Houellebecq is composed of two measures: simply stated as the relationship between eroticism and money.
But, perhaps something else again?
FR- Votre Portrait (32 KB)
exhibitions
2010
Performance of the Utopic Union of Unemployment for Les Nuits Slaves of Kusmi Tea at Galerie Blue Square (March)
Utopic Union of Unemployment Performance, Saint Petersburg (January)
2009
East/West Through, 12 Hour Difference - With Women Artists' Eyes (Collective Exhibition), Zero Field Art Center, Beijing
55 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany
Plug In #51 - Activist Club, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Holland
Scènes Centrales, Tri Postal Europe XXL, lille3000, Lille, France
"The Greatest Idiot in New Zealand" MIC gallery, Snow white gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
11th International Istanbul Biennial
2008
Galerie Blue Square at the Contemporary Art Fair SLICK08
Frictions and conflicts - Cultural Influences and Exchange in Northeast Europe, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Stadsparken, Sweden
Inertia at W139, Amsterdam
http://www.inertia-art.nl
54 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany
Food for thought, Art Festival, U-TURN, Quadriennalle of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark
Artist-Citizens, October Salon, Belgrade
Film festival Kinoshock, Anapa, Russia
Zoo, Contemporary City Foundation, Moscow
2007
National Contemporary Art Prize “Black Square”, Art Moscow studios
Becoming a mother: The work of care in contemporary capitalism; Botkurka Konstholl, Stockholm
Progressive nostalgia; Contemporary Museum Prato, Italy,Tallin
53 Kurzfilm Festival in Oberhausen, Germany (cat.)
2006
Self-Education; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art; Sidney Mishkin Gallery, New York
– screenings at «Electric Visions», Switzerland, Finland, France
Scarlet sails, XL Gallery Moscow
2005
Human project (Moscow biennale), Central House of Artists, Moscow
Drift. Narvskaja zastava, NCCA, Moscow
1960-2000 – Collectivity in Russian Art, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Art-Robe:Women artists at the nexus of art and fashion, UNESCO, Paris/ (cat.)
Russia Redux #1; Shroeder Romero Gallery, New York
Kronstadt FOREVER; site-specific project, Kronstadt
BREAKTHROUGH; London
The Strange people never Surrender; International Bienale of Contemporary Art National Gallery, Prague
2004
Boys and Girls; Zachenta Gallery, Warsaw (cat.)
Watch out! Contemporary art from St.Petersburg and Moscow; Contemporary Art Museum, Oslo
2003
Life! Aktuelle Kunst aus Petersburg; Forum Stadpark, Graz (cat.)
Horizons of reality; MuHKA, Antverpen (cat.)
49 Kurzfilm Festival in Oberhausen, Germany (cat.)
New Start; Contemporary Art from Moscow Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf (cat.)
Projection; Center for Contemporary Art, Nizhny Novgorod
White's Psychoanalytical Room; XL Gallery, Moscow
2002
Baltic Babel; Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo
Davay; Russian Art Now. Berlin -Vienna /cat
2001
107 fears of B.G.; State Hermitage, dedicated to Loise Bourgeois
2000
Magic Room; Installation, interactive multimedia performance, HELSINKI-2000
PRO ARTE INSTITUTE PROJECT contemporary art in the traditional museum. St. Petersburg
Memory of the Body, Vienna-Helsinki, Installation "A Secret room "/ cat
awards
2007 – National Contemporary Art Prize “Black Square”, Art Moscow Studios
2006 – Nifca, residency program
2004 – residency at Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo
2003 – Jaspis residency, Sweden
2002 – Rave Stipendium at Neue Berlinische Kunstverein
2000 – grants from ProArte Institute, Ford Fondation, St. Petersburg , MamaCash Foundation, Amsterdam
1995, 1996, 1997 - grants from Soros Contemporary Art Center, St. Petersburg
click to enlarge