The Friendship Garden

Olga Grotova and Griselda Pollock in conversation

Artist-in-residence Olga Grotova will be in conversation with renowned feminist art historian, Griselda Pollock.

The pair will discuss Pollock's writing on 'spaces', a major theme in Grotova's practice. Over the course of the evening, the pair will explore how paintings and gardens interact and co-exist as containers for erased female histories, spaces of encounters, shifting temporalities, textures and traces.

This event is part of the public programme for Grotova’s ongoing research project The Friendship Garden.

The Friendship Garden explores the land cultivation practices of Soviet women and female resistance to the authoritarian state. Whilst women and marginalised people still have to carve out spaces for themselves, gardens serve not only as a metaphor but as a powerful tool to express oneself and thrive.

  1. Griselda Pollock is Professor emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art at the University of Leeds. For her work as a feminist art historian and cultural theorist she was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2020. Recent Publications: After-Image/After-Affect: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (2013), Charlotte Salomon in the Theatre of Memory (2018), edited with Max Silverman, Concentrationary Imaginaries: Tracing Totalitarian Violence on Popular Culture (2015), Concentrationary Art; Jean Cayrol, The Lazarean and the Everyday in Post-War Literature, Music and the Visual Arts (2019).

  2. Olga Grotova is an artist, poet and activist living and working in London. Her practice involves collecting and mapping stories of Soviet and Eastern-European women that have been erased from established historical narratives. Grotova undertakes research journeys to discover the lost histories of communities and families from former Soviet states in order to dispel male-dominated and power-centric ‘official’ narratives. Her practice is a feminist interruption into the Russian political narrative plagued by extraction, patriarchy and imperialism.

  3. Olga Grotova, Stills from To my daughter I will say (2023). Courtesy the artist.

FREE, booking essential

Thursday 25 May 2023, 7–8.30 pm

Studio Voltaire
1A Nelsons Row
London SW4 7JR


Open Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm.

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