Varvara Keidan Shavrova

memory/loss

2023-2024

Installation

Digitally knitted merino wool and gasolina yarn

Approx. dimensions 4.5m x 2m

NOTE: To experience this piece it is recommended to lie down under it, with your head facing towards the entrance door, on a downward slope

memory/loss is a new artwork that explores experiences of flight, trauma, memory and loss. The installation takes on the form of a knitted object that is suspended above the floor of the Main Gallery in the shape that is reminiscent of an upside down balloon, or a giant tear drop. Drawing on her PhD research into feminism and flight, Keidan Shavrova knits complex images and reveals hidden narratives that she uncovers through researching the Shavrov-Keidan family archives and documents, that tell something about the lives of her family members who were aviators in the 1930s USSR. The photographs that Keidan Shavrova refers to reveal only part of the truth, whilst a significant- and often sinister chapters from the family history- remains obscured. Drawing a parallel with today’s global militarism that dominates flight and its technologies, Keidan Shavrova invites the viewer to reflect on the real and the imagined phenomenology of flight, exploring freefall, floating, suspension and landing, whilst also pointing at the struggles that women, who dedicate their lives to the skies, face today.