Anya Titova's solo show for Artwin Gallery, “Point of Exchange”, is the first in a series of exhibitions in which the artist explores the nature of societies and their transformations. The second project from this series, titled “A Time Capsule”, will open in March 2016 at the LENTOS Kunstmuseum in Linz, Austria.
“Point of Exchange” examines the unanticipated effects of the evolution of current systems, which the artist tracks using multiple strategies and techniques, ranging from sculpture, collage and found objects to installations. As a result, the entire environment serves as both a medium and a means to observe that which, depending on one’s position, can be described as either the optics of power or the power of optics. Drawing on a wide range of contexts – from archaeology and the civil rights movements to the behaviour of animals in captivity – Titova explores the mechanisms of surveillance and control and the collection and analysis of data, as well as the impact of these activities on the production of subjectivity. If one’s perception of the visible world is shaped by and subject to ideological schema, then this space functions as a kind of social and cultural construction, poised at the point where the aesthetic and the political overlap. Images and objects, the connections and contradictions between them – each symbol in this structure wields multiple levels of meaning. Their interactions generate a special atmosphere, capable of revealing the dual nature of social activity, which can be used both to uphold and to critique the typical relationship between the methods and objects of surveillance, bolstered by both historical examples and the uncertainty of what to expect when standing on the brink of the future.
