Illusions
12 Dec 14 > 02 Jan 15
Light and video installations
Sabina Shikhlinskaya is an artist and independent curator working in conceptual and multimedia contemporary art. She has long experience of participation at local and international exhibitions and projects. Art works by Sabina Shikhlinskaya are exhibited and deposited at numerous private and museum collections globally. Her curatorship experience includes more than 60 Azerbaijan-based and foreign projects implementation.
This exhibition project includes seven light and video installations that allegorize and evoke the images of prevailing longings and aspirations of today’s society. The titles of the installations are: “Power”, “Fame”, “Liberty”, “Choice”, “Happiness”, “Horizons”, and “Nature”.
The underlying concept for these works is a reflection on that most essential philosophical human question of “to have or to be?”
Psychoanalyst and Freudo-Marxist, Erich Fromm, wrote in his seminal work “To have or to be?” about the idea of human hopes for boundless happiness, freedom, affluence and domination over nature, with the advent of the Industrial age. Unlimited production was supposed to provoke limitless consumption and therefore bring fulfilment. However, this is largely responsible for the current materialistic state of the general public that simply selects the option of “to have” rather than “to be”.
Shikhlinskaya specifically selected neon as medium, as it is widely used in present day advertising that grabs the attention of the consumers thanks to its luminosity and colour. Since she set a goal of demonstrating critical and ironical perspectives on the appeal and popularity of materialistic aspirations in modern society, neon is the ideal medium to demonstrate the visual and semantic delusory qualities within the exhibited works.