The name of Maxim Svishёv's video installation “Our Mashas” makes a gentle nod to the laughter and gaiety of the popular TV show "Our Russia". The Mashas, which Maxim Svishёv has created using animation and displayed on two large screens in adjacent halls of the Anna Nova gallery shares a common origin: it derives from a freakish Russian reality. Here the underclass develop their own ideas about the real life of elite glamour, and from time to time, albeit on special Rublevka garbage dumps, become familiar with the remnants of the pleasures of the high life. Svishёv chooses for his first focus-group, glamorous ladies of wealth, who luxuriate in beams of happiness, while the second focus-group consists of girls from the housing estates who stand in the rain outside the windows of the elite salons, be they society, spa or art gallery, it makes little difference in any case. The Mashas both here and there are naturally the same, because the social difference between them is accidental: the wealthy glamour girls are yesterday's or tomorrow's estate girls and vice versa. They are assimilar as twins, their general ancestor is the Russian national doll.
Ekaterina Andreeva, exhibition curator