Current artist-in-residence Olga Grotova will be in conversation with artist/curator and researcher Lauren Craig. The event will include a screening of To my daughter I will say, 2023, alongside readings and work-sharing relating to Grotova's ongoing research project, The Friendship Garden, which explores the land cultivation practices of Soviet women and explores female resistance in the authoritarian state.
The Friendship Garden takes the history of the artist’s grandmothers’ garden in the Urals as a prompt to explore alternative economic systems based on friendship, cooperation, and care across diverse communities, diasporas and generations. Through this marginalised female history, Grotova explores gardening as means of resistance to patriarchy and oppression and open up public discussions about the consequences of Soviet and British colonialism, the body’s connection to the land and friendship as an alternative economic force. Whilst women and marginalised people still have to carve out spaces for themselves, gardens serve as a powerful tool to express oneself and thrive.
The project’s starting point is the history of ‘Friendship’, an allotment cooperative where Grotova’s great-grandmother, Klavdia, and her grandmother, Marina, had a plot for three decades from the 1960s, in the aftermath of their return from ALZHIR – an all-female gulag camp for ‘Wives of Traitors to the Motherland’. Friendship was situated on the border with the vast forest that camouflaged a myriad of nuclear research towns.
The garden’s timeline ran parallel to the Cold War but existed outside the official history, instead existing in sync with the lunar cycles, plants, and lives of the female gardeners. The allotment garden became a site where the women’s trauma could be processed through engagement with the land. Since the garden also served as the main source of food, the wellbeing of all the neighbours depended on collaboration and friendship.
Please note: 24 February 2023 marks one year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Studio Voltaire will offer a space of conversation and reflection, centred around shared research and familial histories.
