storytelling is like when wandering in unfamiliar places

The Storyteller — a project by artists duo, Russian Ustina Yakovleva and Finnish Sylvia Javén, who contemplate psychogeography of the Nordic lands and explore borderline states.

Divided geographically, with Ustina residing in Russia and Sylvia in Finland, the artists first met on Kotlin Island, which both separates and simultaneously unites their home countries. Inspired by its secluded environments, Ustina and Sylvia transformed the island’s geographical terrain into an artistic narration — filled with poetic metaphors and their personal emotions. 

The project resulted from the artists’ collab in the Kronshtadt-based art residence — curated by Anna Zavediy.

January, 2020. Ustina and Sylvia met at Kotlin Island in the art residence of Kronshtadt. For a month, they lived together in the midst of freezing waters of January and gusts of northern winds. Immersing themselves in a everyday environment deprived of colors, the artists started to walk across the island and explore its landscapes. Like voyeurs, they set upon collecting natural materials and stories.

Their collaborative series of mockumentary videos present a story of two pilgrims who find themselves in a tower surrounded by sea. This way or another, they will have to cope with the prose and humdrum of the cold Nordic world. Drifting along the shores of the Gulf of Finland and searching through its dark chill waters they spot some clamshells, which later become pieces of a fragile glass-based installation. Another part of the exhibition showcases a major landscape — reconstructed scenery with soaring mountains and snowy valleys. The artists use the found natural materials to tell the viewer a fanciful memoir-like story, where feelings caused by the journey fuse into a single psychogeographical narration, sharing a tale of personal identity and its boundaries.

The travelling artists know this: it is an illusion that something living can be captured, that we can hold on to souvenirs and moments, while the wild landscape itself continues its ever changing process of life and death.

Safety and silence — these are two words that describe Sylvia’s psychological landscape. She traveled alone across the island and came back to painting. Extensive color spaces were meeting and reacting as memory clusters or as stones on a shoreline. Sylvia recalled Norwegian mountains that seemed half-remembered in her imagination. Here, — in the center of the room on the 1st floor — they are as transparent as these recollections of hers.

Luminance andregenesis — this is what has been happening to Ustina recently. She would travel northward, think of her origin, wear a traditional dress and walk in the woods. Then she would go to the mountains, somewhere warm, and pet a new cat every day. Protection cocoons on her embroideries break up and vanish, leaving only luminance behind. Sincere and bold — now here it is, in these ornamental pieces with silk threads and beads.

Every person is an island. Every piece is a recollection. Every bead ashore is both real and unreal at once. Every pin-pierced word is the storyteller’s voice.

Anna Zavediy, curator

abstract from curator’s text

The project has been created with support of the Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg.