Blizzard (Tajiks Art)

Technique: Canvas, acrylic.
Size: 70 × 100 cm.

Blizzard belongs to the Tajiks-Art project by Kirill Shamanov (b. 1975, Leningrad), a Russian artist and writer and the author of the conceptual projects Zero Rubles, GOP-Art and Tajiks-Art. Emerging around 2008–2009 – with Alexander Efremov among its participants – the group addressed migrant labour and the perceived secondariness of Russian contemporary art: by the project's premise the paintings were produced by the hands of hired workers, calling into question notions of authorship and originality. Executed in acrylic on canvas, this winter snowstorm scene reads within that framework – as a statement on the mechanisms of the art market and the value of manual labour. The work continues the line of Russian conceptualism and socially engaged art of the 2000s.