A separate and independent project in Ms. Marina Fedorova’s oeuvre was a series of five figures created specifically for the Gates and Doors exhibition at the State Russian Museum.
On view at the Marble Palace in 2011 was a large number of works by the Russian artists from the 20th and early 21st centuries focusing on the figurative interpretation of a variety of meanings relating to the themes of passage, transition, and overcoming.
Ms. Marina Fedorova chose an unusual medium to create her Everyone Has Their Own Door installation. The five figure objects, Angel, Boy, Woman, Businessman, and Shopaholic, are delicately poised between the realms of drawing, design, and sculpture. By method of smart milling, the figures were cut out of wood and Plexiglas according to the Artist’s drawings.
The ideas of transition, the choice of one’s own path and the predetermination of this choice are expressed with the help of a direct metaphor: each structure consists of two parts – the figure itself with castor wheels attached and a frame into which the figure fits exactly.
The curators of the exhibition aptly note that in Ms. Fedorova’s objects ‘The door has double semantics, working both as a hole and a shutter; in this sense, each person also becomes a door to another.’
The flatness and the ostensible two-dimensionality of these images, perceived as drawings rather than three-dimensional figures, their pointedly manufactured appearance emphasize the symbolic nature of the Artist’s work. The idea, the concept is what the Artist brings to the fore here. At the same time, Ms. Fedorova does not eschew the distinctly decorative style inherent to her creative manner. The contours of each object reflect the precision of the highly elaborate drawing characterized by both elegance and overt ‘prettiness’ central to the modern glossy culture, one of the key subjects of the Artist’s creative exploration for a number of years.
Anastasia Karlova, Ph.D.
Curator of the Department of Contemporary Art, State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg
