Ru

(b. 1985, Kustanay, USSR; lives and works in Yekaterinburg)

Lookbook, 2014
Installation, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist

In her Lookbook project, started in 2014, Anastasia Bogomolova combined offcuts of cloth left by her grandmother with colorful dresses from her mother’s wardrobe, 1980s fashion magazines, and clothing made for her using old patterns and vintage fabrics. Borrowing the lookbook format from fashion, where the term refers to a brand’s seasonal collection, in 2016, in the eponymous photobook, Bogomolova appeared in the role of a Russian Cindy Sherman, trying on her mother’s clothes, reconstructing the beauty ideals of past eras, and demonstrating an amazing transformability. The game of disguise, in the spirit of children’s imitation of adults, is in Bogomolova’s case driven by the desire to understand the notions of the body and sexuality inherited from previous generations and to recognize herself in them. The new version of the installation shown at Garage has been previously been exhibited in Minsk, Ufa, Nizhny Tagil, and Chelyabinsk, where it included old wardrobes and dressing-tables, ironing boards, sewing accessories, hangers, and mirrors. In this iteration, the installation is reduced to a cutting table and a strip which runs along the the entire installation, imitating an endless roll of floral ornament. In the context of The Fabric of Felicity, Lookbook harks back to photos of the “amazons of the avant-garde” wearing outfits made from fabrics they had designed. It also reflects strategies of compensating for the eternal shortages and limited range of Soviet consumer production through the practice of individual tailoring.

Ekaterina Lazareva

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