MONSTRATSIYA ARCHIVE

FROSTING ON GLASS

2017 – 2018

Installation view: Monstratsiya archive at R/SF projects, San Francisco.
Monstratsiya: the sun is your enemy at Headlands Center for the Arts.
Monstratsiya series: The sun is your enemy and Something like this.

Monstratsiya: something like this, 2018.
Monstratsiya: Tanya, don’t cry, 2018.
Monstratsiya: we will make English Japanese, 2018.

Monstratsiya: raccoons are people too, 2018.

Reappropriating absurdist Russian protest signs known as monstratsiya (-monstrations), the works call to loophole behaviors used to circumnavigate legal complications where illegibility and ‘invisibility’ are rendered as effective as direct action. Here, the act of archiving monstratsiya protest signs serves to document these ephemeral gestures and give them permanent form. The collection of monstrations includes: “Get me out of here,” “Porridge is evil,” “What are your plans for eternity,” “Raccoons are people too,” “We’ve had enough borscht,” and “The sun is your enemy.”