Collection

Olga Chernysheva’s works are crucial to the Museum collection because the artist and institution both share an interest in the tough transition post-totalitarian societies have undergone since the 1990s. By portraying marginal scenes and events from daily life (e.g. street-sweepers sitting on a bench, men painting a kerbstone, or a street vendor with an armload of bras), the artist exposes the fragmentation of Soviet culture’s “metanarrative”, using everyday life under modern capitalism for subject matter. Her oil paintings from the Interpretation of Observations series or watercolours from the Citizens and Moveable Feast series poetically illustrate present-day relics of the Communist era. With a strong dose of lyricism, humour and melancholy, Chernysheva questions the role of artists as observers and chroniclers of events.