#viktorvorobyev

Yelena & Viktor Vorobyev Photo for Memory. If a Mountain Doesn't Go to Mahomet series, 2002 C-Print 60 x 90 cm Edition of 5 + 1AP

Yelena & Viktor Vorobyev Knife, 2003 Stone and Wood 60 x 17 x 5 inches

Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev's series, “Photos for Memory. If a Mountain Doesn’t Go to Mohamet,” explores and celebrates humanity’s spiritual as well as psychological need to experience the other--be it other people, places, foods or cultures. The photos were taken during a research trip around the southern part of Kazakhstan where the couple offered many local villagers the chance to be photographed by the artists against a variety of destination backdrops, such as the Kremlin, the World Trade Center towers (which at the time of their project in 2002 had already been destroyed), and the Eiffel Tower.

  By the artists’ simple act of photographing their subjects in front of these backgrounds, they fulfilled their desires, transporting them to their dream destinations, while at the same time questioning the value of real and virtual experience and criticizing the role of global advertising campaigns in today’s world. The photographic series in its entirety, which encompasses hundreds of images, beautifully illustrates that “being elsewhere” is a surprisingly universal human desire. 

“Knife,” is a compelling metaphor for nomadic life as that of “living on the edge.” A larger than life, stunning organic sculpture made from an actual slab of stone and a tree base; it is a work full of nostalgia for nature, not only from a spiritual but also a physical and artistic stance.  The use of natural, raw materials was dramatically affected by industry-expanding regimes during the Soviet era, which continues in Central Asian countries today through capitalistic ventures: exploitation of the region’s vast natural resources in all sectors of society as part of a race to tap into Western economies’ formulas for prosperity. The knife as a mundane object made by the artists using found materials is also a reference to the creative and utilitarian spirit that enabled many artists in Central Asia to survive the turmoil of a fallen art system that had supported them during the decades of the Soviet era.