Arseny Zhilyaev

Arseny Zhilyaev was born in Voronezh in July 1984 and now lives between Moscow and Gothenburg.
He was educated at VoronezhStateUniversity (psychology and philosophy faculty), the Institute of Problems of Contemporary Art and the ValandSchool of Fine Arts ( Sweden).
He has taken part in special projects and parallel programs at the third Moscow Biennale (2009) and many group exhibitions.
During 2008-09 he held three personal exhibitions in Russia and Sweden.

Time Is on the Side of Communism

With my work I am recounting the history of possibilities and hopes. I would like to believe it is a unique form of history of the future that emerges from the mistakes of the past and present. In my project, a few threads structure the narrative: the declamatory images of female identity borrowed from Soviet books about shock-workers, home photos of schoolchildren found on the Internet, and bits of old Soviet furniture. I think Utopia is a ceaseless construction of the future, and there are no stops along the way. As I see it, today’s construction site is the everyday formation of subjectivity.
This project is a small sketch of this endless process.

Арсений Жиляев. Из проекта Время работает на коммунизм. 2010. Инсталляция. Смешанная техника. Courtesy Галерея Марины Гончаренко / Arseny Zhilyaev. From the Time Is on the Side of Communism project. 2010. Installation. Mixed media. Courtesy GMG Gallery