Natalia Mali

Наталья Мали

 Перформанс

“… and the wind is blowing from the left ”

Natalia Mali

 

Born in 1971 in Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, Russia.

In late 1980s Natalia Mali was an Art Theory student at the History Department of Moscow State University, Russia. Between 1996 and 2000 she studied film and photography at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, Yale University, New Haven, USA.

Since the mid-90s Natalia Mali has been active in the field of experimental theatre, performance, film and video making. She has directed and produced several documentary, video and video art projects. Among them is the documentary Russia’s Forgotten War, which was internationally aired by the CNN in 2002.

Natalia Mali is the author of several solo (Inpaccando Lo Spazio, … and the wind was blowing from the left, Kind Feelings), and group (Viola for Legs, Death and the Child and others) performances. She staged and acted in numerous personal and collective live performances, experimental theatre pieces, shows and art events.  In 2002 together with Adrei Prigov she produced the musical performance Cidws: New Dionysian Hymns at the Russian National Centre for Contemporary Art, N. Novgorod.

Since 2001 as member of Prigov Family Group she has staged and acted in numerous performances for the wider audience: Towards the Father: Deliverance as a Ritual, Domestication of Potatoes, Chthonic Terror, Kind Feelings, and many others. Sound and music are the principal constituents of all her performances. Music for her pieces has been written by professional composers (Sergei Zagniy, Sergei Letov, Iraida Yusupova, Jana Skrivanek, Richard Crow, German Popov and others) and musicians from many different countries who usually personally mix or play out their music during performances.

Natalia Mali has participated in many art group events in Russia, UK, Germany, Italy, USA and etc. Her works of art are held in the following archives: “The LUX” (London, UK), State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia), National Centre for Contemporary Art (Russia), Centre for Contemporary Art “Spazio Umano” (Italy, Milano).

Lives and works in Moscow and London.

 

 

 

Наталья Мали

«Пойдет налево – песнь заводит»

А.С.Пушкин

“Blow, wind, blow!”

Mother Goose Rhymes. Invocations.

Гранат как плод, несущий жертвенность, белое платье как чистота и светоносность, книга как мудрость и человеческая память – все эти ритуальные предметы художественного поведения Наталии Мали присутствуют в фундаментальных культурах. Они составляют словарь художницы, функциональные образы ее перформанса, способные пересекать границу между искусством и реальностью в контексте детства между “play” и “game”. В этом проявляется позиция путешественника сквозь время - может быть, искателя примет утраченного времени, где ирония современной истории и культуры встречается с архетипами великой Архаики. В акции   “… and the wind is blowing from the left ” предстает оживающая  картина раннего Возрождения как постмодернистская реплика, как поиск ушедшей полноты мироощущения и тотальности искусства, отсылая к буддийским мандалам, образам дзен и универсальной иконологии древнего Востока. В естественной игровой форме художница рассказывает о сквозной теме нашей истории – теме гибели и возрождения цивилизации в классической и совершенно иррациональной по существу форме , погружаясь в глубь времен и в сеть вечных проблем.

В своих стратегиях художница использует образы «алхимической свадьбы». Снижая торжественность высокой речи, в перформансе “… and the wind is blowing from the left ” включается ангел из «Waiting for Godot (Ожидания Годо)» Беккета - виртуальный сын художницы и проводник энергии ветра. Он облучает таинственный манускрипт (являющийся одновременно стандартным «текстом»), с которым ведет диалог Наталья Мали, вмешиваясь в акцию, очищая и высушивая ее цветные «последствия». Профанный жест беккетовского ангела, где божественным инструментом является абсолютно банальный предмет – фен, сушка для волос, сближает ритуальное поведение художницы с алхимическими технологиями Marcel Duchamp. Внутренний театр Наталии Мали вместе с ангелами и демонами нашего настоящего, прошлого и будущего воплощает мистерию личного мифа художницы, приоткрывая занавес и страницы текста универсальных традиций и откровений.

Перелистывание книги человеческой истории в проекте осуществляется с левой стороны – именно так, как течет река времени и бьется человеческое сердце.

Виталий Пацюков

“…and the wind is blowing from the left”

 

 

                                    «To the right he goes - he sings a song»

Alexander Pushkin

 

“Blow, wind, blow!”

Mother Goose Rhymes. Invocations.

 

The pomegranate as a fruit fraught with sacrifice, the white dress bearing purity and light, the book as a receptacle of wisdom and human memory: these elements of rituals that make up Natalia Mali’s artistic behaviour are also ubiquitously present in all major culture systems. They constitute the artist’s vocabulary acting as operating icons in her performance.  These artistic units negotiate the boundary between art and reality in a manner similar to our crossing the line separating “play” and “game” in the context of our childhood.  They reveal a time traveller’s perspective as a hunter for signs of lost times where the irony of modern history and culture encounters archetypes of the Great Archaic.  “… and the wind is blowing from the left” generates a tableau vivant of the early Renaissance to be perceived as a post-modern rejoinder, as a quest for the lost fullness of Weltanschauung and the all-pervasiveness of art that refer back  to Buddhist mandalas, images of Zen and the universal iconology of the ancient Orient. Employing natural tools of performance the artists relates a recurring theme in our history – the destruction and rebirth civilisation - in a rather classical and essentially irrational way while sinking deep into the abyss of time and getting entangled in a mesh of eternal problems.  The artist’s strategies employ images of a so-called “alchemical wedding”. The solemnity of elevated speech is deflated when the angel from Becket’s Waiting For Godot joins in “… and the wind is blowing from the left” and assumes the role of the artist’s virtual son and the conductor for the wind’s energy. While Natalia Mali is engaged in her “dialog” with a mysterious manuscript, the pages of which are covered with ordinary-looking texts, the angelic son irradiates the book with his rays, intervening in the action, cleans and dries the “colourful” results of their joint action. The profane gesture of Becket’s angel, whose divine tool is a totally commonplace object –a hairdryer –, draws together the artist’s ritualistic behaviour and Marcel Duchamp’s alchemical technology. Together with angels and demons from our past, present and future, Natalia Mali’s inner theatre embodies the mystery of the artist’s personal myth while half-opening the curtain and pages of the book of universal traditions and revelations.

During this performance the book of human history will be leafed through from the left – in just the same way as the river of time flows and the human heart beats.

 Vitaliy Patsyukov