Lyudmila Gorlova Happy End

As for many of her fellow artists of the same generation, the new reality became both a difficult challenge and a kind of privilege—the decade’s dynamic socio-political transformations demanded a renewed artistic language and instant responses to epochal shifts. Her work reflects some of the most acute issues of contemporary society such as adolescent rebellion, gender inequality, and youth culture.

Filming for Happy End took place over several days at the viewing platform on Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills), a traditional destination for newlyweds. Everything in this video is familiar and instantly recognizable, even trivial: the off-key choir, the out-of-tune orchestra, the newlyweds’ awkward dancing, and the desperate merriment of tipsy guests. Gorlova’s work draws on the tradition of Russian genre painting, where from the mid-nineteenth century onward artists used ritual scenes to reflect the state of society, which can be seen, for example, in Pavel Fedotov’s famous The Major Makes a Proposal (1848) or The Unequal Marriage by Vasily Pukirev (1862) from the State Tretyakov Gallery collection. It also anticipates trends in pop culture represented by Zhora Kryzhovnikov’s film Gorko! (2013) or the Four Weddings reality show from 2018, where traditions turn into grotesque formalities.

Through brilliant editing, Happy End’s documentary footage becomes a universal metaphor for human happiness, one that remains possible despite all the «winds of change» and the general instability of life at the turn of the twenty-first century. The work thus serves both as a poetic commentary on the everyday and as a striking example of wedding anthropology.