Natalia Khlebtsevich presents her project entitled Ab Ovo, which is an installation using raw eggs out of their shells, enclosed in the watertight Petri Dishes and dipped in black soil . In the course of the exhibition, as the eggs one by one spoil, the dishes are being covered with the humus. By the end of the exhibition the eggs are completely buried and what remains is only the patch of black soil.
The symbolism of the egg, as well as that of the earth correlates with fertility, death and immortality. The egg in the animal word is analogous to the seed or grain in the plant world. The ancients believed the egg is initially lifeless and only comes to life after a certain time period, as if reborn from the dead. The earth is destined to hatch it and then become its grave. The soil, or the earth is a symbol of both the beginning and the end, it can give life and also take it away. By combining the well known symbols of the beginning and the end of existence of all living things, this project contemplates the inseparability of life and death, the hope for rebirth and the inevitability of departure.
The ancient Romans had the saying Ab ovo usque ad mala, from the egg to the apple, indicating the sequence of a meal with metaphorical meaning of going through all stages of a process, and, as applied to human life, from conception to the completion of life’s journey.
The project "Between the Lines" is a series of plaques of fired porcelain (size 35/25 cm), in the technique of "paper clay” with passages from well-known literary works, including the excerpts from Franz Kafka and Anatole France. Texts are written with special paints, diluted in a sugar syrup in accordance with the traditional technology of overglaze porcelain painting. Before the painted plaques go to kiln to be fired, they are placed in containers with Madagascar cockroaches. Attracted to sugar they partially consume the sweet text . Subsequently, the plaques are fired. One of them, unfired, exhibited in a specially equipped display case where the artist’s work is continued to be co-created by the insects witnessing by the audience during the exhibition. The text on it, by Gregory Kapelyan, begins with the words "about reading between the lines."
Between the Lines
ab ovo
Days
hours
minutes
years
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Porcelain, decal
2013
240/60/50
The installation consists of free-standing light box. Passport photos, printed by decal method on semi-transparent porcelain plaques placed on top of the lighted glass. The portrayed people range from newborn to the most elderly.
The prosaic act of taking a passport or ID photo signifies a certain score mark, when an individual embarks on a next stage in his/her life. Collected in a crowd of images, these portraits, frontal and formal, create a juxtaposition of frozen moments of each person's life with inexorable flow of common time as it shows in signs of aging.
The fragility of porcelain plaques threaded by very slim rods, made of the same material, their seemingly unstable appearance convey a human being’s vulnerability against its own future.
In the moment of being photographed a person facing a camera is utterly defenseless, bound by the rigorous rules of the genre: no moving, sit up straight, look into eyes, no smiling. A person cannot cancel this photo-taking for the unavoidable need of creating a document (a passport or an ID) that confirms this person’s presence in life.
2010
Water, faïence
1000/2000/10
The installation consists of shallow water tanks where a number of faïence tablets are submerged. The tablets bear the photocopies of authentic documents from different times and countries. The stationary tranquility of the composition is punctuated by the occasional drops of water from above.
The faïence sheets are rolled to maximum thinness evoking the association with paper as the primary means of documentation and preservation of human data, the material entrusted by people as the keeper of their memory.
Paper is flammable, clay, on the contrary is preserved by flame, water is the opposite of fire, paper is destined to be a document, clay embodies paper resistant to fire, and water makes the fire impossible to start. A document, an ID card, a testimony about human beings and their flight from unavoidability of oblivion. A passport photo. A passport photo of an unknown individual, whose existence is certified by the paper, confirming that this person's face has been known to this paper assigned to save it from obscurity. A life lived and absorbed into the sands washed by the sea of historical necessities, bringing ashore the flotsam of socially determined testimonies of human condition. Natural persons, subjects of administrative control, captured by impersonal eye of a photo lens at a moment, when individuals submit themselves to the administrative control. A moment, when a person asks for permission to be. Scraps of paper-thin clay in undiluted water of oblivion.