“We went to work but produced nothing […] We only had irony and sarcasm.” The
epitome of a meme-fed millennial working in late capitalism’s service economy, one might say.
Ironically, these statements pertain to life in the Soviet Union as recounted by the mother
of Russian-born artist Margarita Maximova in her video Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers.
The video revolves around the transcribed memories of the artist’s mother regarding life in the
Soviet era, in light of Mikhail Bulgakov’s famously censored novel The Master and Margarita.
Chronicling the role this novel had in creating a new collective consciousness in the
USSR, Maximova's video devises a mirroring effect through the use of her mother’s statements,
and the latter’s description of people surreptitiously exchanging phrases from Bulgakov’s
“profane bible.” Presented on a small screen with headphones, the video emphasizes this
exchange of short sentences. They become the vectors that create a sense of togetherness in spite
of the contingency of fragmented language. Mixing skillful shots of shimmering vodka and aerial
views of Berlin’s former Soviet suburbs, the oneiric piece made for this duo exhibition with
Aisha Christison, feeds upon the artist’s 2017 video, Memorial. In Memorial, Maximova
reconstructed the identity of her estranged father by bringing together her mother’s recollection
with images of a commemorative statue, and footage of East Berlin’s Plattenbauen.
This activity of merging one’s available representations with one’s projections; of
consuming images in order to create new ones, is also at play in the intimately scaled oil
paintings of Aisha Christison. Her layered depictions of spiritual realities exert a charming sense
of foreboding. The sanguinary red painting of a cat putting forward its severed tail in a
ceremonial offering, glows under the red light of Damien & The Love Guru’s recently
partitioned space. Its slick layered surface acts like a membrane storing time but not freezing it.
Standing on its hind legs, this feline could be the infamous Behemoth from The Master and
Margarita — a large demonic cat with human attributes, and a known penchant for vodka and
destruction. Is Christison's cat really handing over its tail, or is it trying to trick us in an attempt
to steal our tongue? Harm or charm? The old story goes, that the cats of witches would steal the
tongues of those who encountered them so they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone.
Speechlessness is again at stake in Christison's painting of a dentist light. Mounted on a
jointed metallic arm propping it off the wall, A-R-T-I-C-U-L-A-T-E first appears as a small
geometric abstraction before revealing its representational quality. Not unlike trying to speak
after a tooth extraction, this painting is marked by a void — a dark oval shape indicating the
absence of light in the center of the dental device. In Christison’s symbolism, caregivers and
magicians often become interchangeable Jungian archetypes. Harm and Charm correlates, while
the stars that populate her canvases blink like the light of a fire alarm in a waking dream. Her
pictures call to mind the work of belatedly discovered painters Agnes Pelton and Gertrude
Abercrombie. Dreamers of dreams whose black cats, moon cycles and portals are clearly shifting
the orbits of painting today.
At the back of the gallery, a small painting shows a crane fly swimming in a toilet bowl.
Flush it or save it? We peer down into the toilet’s vortex, the hole in its centre like the threshold
of a domestic antediluvian world. A gateway that would get lost on those who lower themselves
onto the seat without looking. At the front of the space, a larger blue painting suggests the other
side of the hole. Waste Management is crossed by yellow pipes trading water like fountains of
youth, while a dead fish symbol known to signal environmentally hazardous substances, hovers
over the scene in an oval halo. In popular dream interpretation, dead fish are also a symbol of
loss or missed opportunities — another type of waste management.
“…if you lose a thing the retrieval of what you think you have lost becomes that thing the
facts of loss become the content…” writes Artun Alaska Arasli in the unpunctuated text
accompanying the exhibition. His keen remark also applies to Maximova's second video. In
Sway a way, the film from a cell phone falling down an aircraft, GoPro cameras getting lost in
the ocean, tumbling down rivers, or picked up by birds, come together in a continuous filmic
whirlpool. Sampling these accidental excerpts from a camera operator’s diary, Maximova’s
montage of found footage is the lockdown exercise of a contemporary kinok. Cameras severed
from the body of their GoPro Heroes, turn the I into a machine, as the lost mechanical eye
becomes the protagonist of a disembodied point of view. However, what we observe on the
overheard screen of her installation is not an autonomous mechanical vision, but rather, the
more-than-human world with a movie camera. Its disorienting cinematography fueled by Joeri
Bultheel’s atmospheric score could be what happened if Jean Painlevé had Crittercams to make
his surrealist Neo-Zoological Dramas. But, there is something more mediated about Maximova’s
video; something about the spiral of life merging with the vortex of the internet as we imagine
her searching the web to collect other-worldly sequences.
In Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers, Maximova’s mother goes on to say “It was a
happy time […] Yet lethargy ruled amongst us.” Six months ago, in the comments section of an
enthralling GoPro ad, someone reflected “I bought a few go pro cameras - but life is still boring.”
Give or take, this person has more cameras than they have arms and legs, yet they apparently
produce nothing with them. People like to say it takes losing something to realize what you had.
You can lose your teeth, your tail, or your camera, but in the Soviet era - like today - the few who
have too much have a lot more to lose.
Text by Emile Rubino
Harm and Charm
Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison and Margarita Maximova with writings by Artun Alaska Arasli
Dates:9. January 2020 - 27. February 2021
Photography: © GRAYSC / courtesy of the artists and Damien & The Love Guru
www.margaritamaximova.be
www.aishachristison.com
