Text
First published in Beda Media 07/12/2024
Russian
English
Editor: Beda Media
Translater: Wren Bisley
Supported by
Scholarship Kunstfonds Bonn
First published in Beda Media 07/12/2024
Russian
English
Editor: Beda Media
Translater: Wren Bisley
Supported by
Scholarship Kunstfonds Bonn
Kolesova contemplates on symbolic and practical role of peat extraction in early soviet industrialisation. Starting with their own experience of growing up in an extractivist settlement which was literally built on peat, but without solid ground under their feet, the artist then leads us further through the routes of little-known work migrations of the 1920s–1930s.
Young women, who were mostly coming from non-Russian villages of the Volga-Ural region and hoping to get out of the dullness and hardships of rural life, took up radical changes and went to work in peat harvesting. The light and abundance of the socialist future promised by GOELRO began here: in the ice-cold swamp mud, without proper work uniforms and instruments, with endless exploitation of female bodies that were losing their health and strength with each day spent working, without their impact ever properly acknowledged. In order to overcome the total archival silence about women’s labour at the peat extraction facilities, Kolesova uses a method of artistic simulations, reworking official documents, measly numbers and oral stories into scenes of everyday work routine.
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