The author has a very respectful, Levi-Strausstype attitude to small northern peoples. But to this is added an anecdotal layer, though one not remotely taken from the false perspective of national make-up, as in many of these Chukotkan jokes (which in any case could be applied to any national type). In large painted compositions Alexandrov blends in equal doses ethnographism, the sacredness and nakedness (lethargy and phenomenological arrestment) of thought processes (it is they indeed that are the drivers) which to the prepared mind have a dadaist subtext and to the layperson, comical overtones...
Yuri Alexandrov (or the Alexandrov group — he insists on a certain collectivism, well, amongst small tribes individualism is not considered a virtue) has brought a very logical project out of Chukotka. In fact it’s a revelation. Dadaism, hiding in Chukotka from the repression of the rational conceptualist movements of the last century, crippled by the cold, warmed by the thighs of Chukotkan women and spell bound by the phallic rituals of the Mergen is alive. Indeed, in its new incarnation it’s as strong as a walrus tusk.
Aleksander Borobsky