varvara keidan shavrova
DREAMWORLDS OF FLIGHT IN THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM EXPLORED THROUGH FEMINIST 'POETIC TECHNOLOGIES' OF TEXTILE INSTALLATIONS
Summary
In my research through practice I examine multitude of narratives associated with flight, discover new ways of looking at how avionics, technology, gender and labour have related to one another and in what ways these relationships may be shifting. My research is also my practice, which diverges from conventional, technical analyses of aeronautical design. My approach to research is more personal and emerged from efforts to research the history of my own family and its links to aeroplane design in the 1920’s; by investigating the story of the Shavrov Sh-2 amphibious plane designed by my grandfather, Vadim Shavrov. This study, along with the personal accounts of family members, leads me to scrutinise the gendering of aviation around ‘hard’ technologies and myths of masculine heroism that contrast with earlier imaginings of flight associated with witchcraft and the domain of feminine power.
In my studio work, I use soft sculptural materials and textiles-bound techniques such as sewing, tufting and weaving, to explore these questions. I have staged exhibitions of large scale, for example the recent installation of a giant Rover-inspired merino wool parachute soft sculpture entitled ‘Dare Mighty Things’ which was floated inside the new Hangar space at the Royal College of Art Battersea. In this work, the soft textile objects that express poetic resonances in the technologies of flight through sculptural installations, challenge us to question how the choice of materials can embody gendered constructs.
To date, I have been progressing my objectives through research in the studio and by textual engagement with literature around the subject; in particular the writing of Paul Virilio on Speed And Politics, and Silvia Federici Caliban and the Witch. This work has prompted me to examine how many of the questions that I articulate in my research can be addressed by the curatorial methodologies and display techniques of contemporary exhibition-making. I investigate these methodologies and approaches to flight and its iterations through Science Museum's London interpretations and display, where I am currently on LAHP-AHRC-funded research placement.
Additional info
‘In my research I re-examine the conjunction between art, technology, and the state in relation to the modernist avant-garde and develop new models for ‘poetic technologies’ that can present a critical framework in the age of surveillance capitalism. Following the explorations into technology made by the artists of the modernist avant-garde and utopianism, I reroute their trajectory towards the domestic realm, as a methodology to radically re-engage with the inspiration of flight, of technology and of dreams, and to scope the imagination in the state formation processed through a post-feminist perspective.’
Varvara Keidan Shavrova ‘Dreamworlds of Flight in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism’
Varvara Keidan Shavrova is a visual artist, writer, curator, and researcher. Born in the USSR, in the family of artists of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Jewish, Georgian, and Armenian ancestry, she left the Soviet Union in 1989, at the start of perestroika, and spent most of her adult life living and working between London, Dublin, Berlin and Beijing. Keidan Shavrova received MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been awarded AHRC London Arts & Humanities Partnership Studentship for her practice-based PhD at the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited and curated projects internationally, including Across Chinese Cities: Beijing at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, The Opera at Gallery of Photography Ireland and at Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Tenerife, Untouched at Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City and at The City Museum and Galway Arts Festival in Ireland, Unruly Encounters at Dilston Grove Southwark Park Galleries and Haptic Codes at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London. Keidan Shavrova has contributed articles, essays, and reviews to international publications, including Visual Artists Ireland, Virginia Commonwealth University Arts Qatar magazine, and Yale Publications, among others. She has recently contributed the paper 'Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds: Lithuanian artistic and cultural struggle for self-determination as a symbol made relevant by Putin’s war in Ukraine' presented at the international conference ‘100 Years of Self-Determination’ at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. She presented her research paper ‘Ukrainian and Lithuanian artists’ struggle for self-determination during Putin’s invasion in Ukraine’ at the international conference ‘The Politics of Memory as a Weapon. Perspectives on Russia’s War against Ukraine’ held at the Museum of Documentation of Flight and Migration in Berlin.
varvara.keidan.shavrova@network.rca.ac.uk
Instagram @varvara_keidan_shavrova
M+44 7947130681
