Katya Ev (ekaterina vasilyeva)
Katya Ev develops artistic practices at the intersection of visual arts and performance. Their practice explores the complex relationship between society, economy, and the body, aiming to uncover our potential for political agency within dominant power structures. By subverting objects of state power, tools of everyday capitalism (laws, contracts), or rituals and gestures perceived as ordinary or banal, Ev constructs a performative language that questions socio-political and cultural codes. Her work seeks to disrupt the status quo, both in artistic and non-artistic contexts.
Ev’s practice spans actionist-like performances in public spaces, infiltrated interventions in museums, durational performative activations of exhibitions, etc. Extending beyond traditional stage performances, these carefully orchestrated interventions emerge from situated theoretical and practice-based research, incorporating 'found' components from various cultural layers and fields of knowledge. Ev further expands live performances into videos, installations, photographs, and print editions.
Addressing various power dynamics and engaging with feminist perspectives, "Ev’s performances subtly undermine authority and create subversive situations." These situations incorporate the notion of risk, spur unexpected results, and wield a soft power that remains elusive or invisible while navigating the "borderline between what society accepts and what it doesn’t.'
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"I think one may distinguish three elements in your work. One is the performative dimension, which leads to the works being categorized as “performances,” and another is the fact that you focus everything into poignant images. Still prior to this double figure of performance and image, there is a contextual capacity, as if your work were something you weave: you look at different elements, and then develop a work that reconfigures those elements. For that reason, I like this notion of a “constructed situation,” which is certainly more precise than that of a “performance.” Your work might be seen as a kind of a constructed image, and even as an image, in the sense of a kind of a performative image, happening in each of your projects and aspiring to be continued [...]” Bart de Baere, "A Conversation Between Katya Ev and Bart De Baere", M HKA Library—cat. In a Long Blink of an Eye, HISK (Be), 2020
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" Ev creates a conceptual –abstract performative cartography of a decidedly political dimension. Apart from the artist’s capacity for ambitious and unexpected leaps of imagination, what makes Ev’s work particularly engaging is its immanent – not prescriptive – politicality. More importantly this is work that does not talk politically, as so much contemporary art does, but thinks, acts and behaves politically. Ev’s carefully orchestrated subtle interventions in public space spur unexpected results, uncontrolled reaction, and open up possibilities for spontaneous response situations.
Hence, there is a real factor of risk inherent in much of her work, which renders it vulnerable for unexpected occurrences. Such as Iceberg -18010813. Blue Room, for example, where strangers were invited to a secret location and were given the opportunity to use the dark web, spend the night, and engage in activities that could not be subject to any kind of surveillance. What is fascinating here, as in many of Ev’s works, is that the transgression takes place in the space of the invisible – one can only imagine what went on inside that ‘safe room’, because no one knows except those who made use of it individually. It will forever remain a secret to the artist as well as the rest of us. Again it is a case of a situation which is highly provocative and risky but without shouting out loud and parading its politicality.
Every performance or intervention is therefore carefully considered, mapped out and orchestrated – but always keeping open the possibility of the unexpected - and every performance is relevant to the situation it takes place in, be it a physical situation (as in her museum interventions) or a political situation be it local (Paris, Moscow) or global (the problem of mass surveillance of citizens). Ev engages with power dynamics of different sorts, subtly undermining authority, and creating subversive situations, whose soft power remains elusive, or invisible. She wisely avoids forced confrontation or visitor interaction, rather activating subtle challenges to structures of power. What is remarkable is both the imaginative scope of her work as it is difficult to sometimes grasp the sweeping remit of her performances, and the intelligent political commentary.."
Katerina Gregos, artistic director EMST - National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (Gr), On Katya Ev, 2020