We Lived in Those Years...

The exhibition We Lived in Those Years... aimed to recreate the image of a Soviet courtyard childhood of the 1970s without using traditional media such as painting, drawing or sculpture. A composition compiled of numerous volleyball marks was on display at the gallery‑as if a bored player had repeatedly thrown the ball against the wall. Yet these round imprints were arranged into a carefully calibrated ensemble, subtly forming the structure of a painting. It was disguised as a fragment of reality, transported into the exhibition space. On the floor, the artists placed a dramatically lit pile of excrement‑apparently left by a dog that had been wandering nearby. In this way, the dogmatic realism of Soviet aesthetics was upheld, even though it appeared as a gesture of contemporary art. The format of the exhibition installation was a metaphor for the rejection of traditional artistic media in favor of the action‑based practices of the early 1990s.