Return to search results

After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen

Irina Nakhova. Camping 1990. Installation of four oil canvas cots (detail). 22.9 x 72.4 x 198.1 cm.

This exhibition included more than thirty works completed since 1988 by leading "unofficial" Russian artists. Like their Western avant-garde counterparts, many of these artists work in photographic, textile and performance-based media. Their art explored the contradictions in the roles assigned to Soviet women in the post-totalitarian climate of "refeminization" and disemployment. On a public discussion panel, faculty from three Halifax universities first evoked the fascinating history of art under totalitarianism, then deconstructed the feminist "orthodoxy" of the thinking behind the exhibition.

Return to search results