Anya Belkina: MOSTON

Artist(s):

• Anya Belkina

Title:

MOSTON

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 2011: Tracing Home in The Age of Networked Techniques
• More artworks from SIGGRAPH 2011:
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Creation Year:

2011

Category:

• 3D & Sculpture

Artist Statement:

Ideas and observations stemming from bicultural experience and the larger issues of identity, immigration, and globalization are central to Anya Belkina’s work. She fuses art with inquiry in the areas of biology, physics, and computer science. MOSTON, a 12-foot-tall suspended inflatable sculpture, embodies an internal conception of home and the cyberfusion of two geographically distant locales: Moscow and Boston. Its surface design of printed artwork and documentary footage projection explores visual and historical commonalities of the two cities, commonalities that are more easily researched, documented, and shared in the era of instant global networking. While MOSTONs three-dimensional form references ethnically specific artifacts, the visual appeal and conceptual ingenuity of matryoshkas reach audiences beyond Russia and the Russian diaspora. A universally understood symbol of sequential creation, these coys offer a fitting framework for evoking the concentric evolution of Moscow’s and Boston’s city armatures. The implied nestedness of MOSTON is also congruent with the layered mental construct of”home,” especially as perceived by individuals with multicultural backgrounds. Belkina describes the scale of the project as essential, not only because her motherland is the largest country in the world, with an impressive record of pursuing hopeless megalomaniac ventures, but also because “there is no place like home.”