work in progress 2003-2007, installations
chalk, gauze, jute, incision on wall, video projection
variable dimensions
“Jelena Vasiljev works on the theme of power as aggressive violence, as a natural and instinctive impulse and as a cruel and bloody instrument that is adopted in so-called civilized human societies. As an artist, she has no interest in dealing with the tragic events that have swept across her country (and others) in an explicit and direct manner; she is not interested in the descriptive and documentary aspects in their more literal sense, but rather in gaining close understanding of the primary dialectics between life and death that lie at the root of the existence of individuals and of the community. And she does so with extraordinary expressive tension, but also with extreme formal elegance, in an installation inhabited by a pack of scrawny wolves modelled in plaster. A non-rhetorical metaphor of the human condition.”
Extract from catalogue “Go East!”, text by Francesco Poli, 2004
B E I N G L I K E T H I S T H E W O L V E S/ T H E M O S T D I F F I C U L T T O H U N T/
W H A T T H E M A N A R E L I K E, 2003-2007
chalk, gauze, jute, incision on wall, video projection
variable dimensions
“Jelena Vasiljev works on the theme of power as aggressive violence, as a natural and instinctive impulse and as a cruel and bloody instrument that is adopted in so-called civilized human societies. As an artist, she has no interest in dealing with the tragic events that have swept across her country (and others) in an explicit and direct manner; she is not interested in the descriptive and documentary aspects in their more literal sense, but rather in gaining close understanding of the primary dialectics between life and death that lie at the root of the existence of individuals and of the community. And she does so with extraordinary expressive tension, but also with extreme formal elegance, in an installation inhabited by a pack of scrawny wolves modelled in plaster. A non-rhetorical metaphor of the human condition.”
Extract from catalogue “Go East!”, text by Francesco Poli, 2004