'FOREIGN LANDS' PROJECT
We are witnessing tremendous socio-cultural changes in the world today. The earth has begun to move. The geography of the earth is changing. Huge masses of people are changing their dwelling places. Leaving one land for another. How does a person experience and separate ours and theirs – what is the difference? At what point does the foreign become native, and vice versa?
Hence land becomes a form of instability. An object of political manipulations. It is a place for violent conflicts. It is a substance that changes itself and changes people. But what is the human contribution to the history and fate of the land, and when does the question whose is it arise? And is this question so important?
When people don't ask themselves these questions, the land turns into an abstract concept. Foreign lands evoke a rather complex set of emotions. And rather contradictory.
That's why I tried to make these works – you could call them abstract, but you could call it hyperrealism. This is what led to a mix of drawing and sculpture that can't be precisely defined.
Regarding the characters. The drawings are an attempt to introduce a broader connotation of foreign lands – the characters from the cult film Aliens or fragments of shots from travels to foreign lands.
Life in the earth or even under the earth, when man becomes a part of it.
-Kirill Chelushkin