Past Residents Elizaveta Konovalova
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Elizaveta Konovalova, Altstadt, exhibition view at Fondation Schneider, Wattwiller, France, 2016
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Elizaveta Konovalova, San Francisco, 2016-2017
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Elizaveta Konovalova, Soot (Oziorsk), exhibition view at Maubert gallery, Paris, 2016
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Elizaveta Konovalova, K (exhibition view), 2018
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Elizaveta Konovalova, K (edition), 2018
Elizaveta Konovalova was born in Moscow in 1986. She studied at the National school of fine arts in Paris and participated in several residency programs in Russia, France, Germany and Switzerland. In 2018 Elizaveta obtained a PhD in visual arts, presenting an exhibition and a publication with a common title – K. Her thesis was dedicated to Kaliningrad, exclave of Russia inside Eastern Europe.
Elizaveta Konovalova’s practice mostly focuses on reading landscapes. She combines field and documentary research to trace connections between singular situations and larger phenomena. She often uses found material, textual and visual, to construct new narratives, embodied in the forms that she elaborates by montage. Her works include installations, film- and photography-based works, site-specific interventions.
Elizaveta Konovalova is laureate of the award of Paris Institute of Political Studies for contemporary art (2014) and finalist of the SAM prize for contemporary art, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017).
Exploring a new territory is a sort of an engine of my practice. The journey, the very moment of geographical displacement produces necessary effect of triggering thoughts. My work mostly focuses on reading landscapes.
During the residency at HIAP I intend to explore connections, historical and semantic, between Suomenlinna and Kronstadt, located in the Gulf of Finland, 30 km from Saint Petersburg. I am interested in this insular tandem – two fortresses, historical antagonists in military conflicts of the past – and different scenarios that they followed when the initial function – protecting the capital – was abolished. Museification, abandonnement.
I am planning to dedicate the first half of my stay to field and documentary research, and orient further work in line with the outcome of my investigation.
The residency is realised in context an exchange between Zarya Center for Contemporary Art (Vladivostok) and HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme. The collaboration is a part of Connecting Points programme supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture.