Katya Ev I Axe de Révolution

Untitled (Axe de Révolution)

iron profile 6 x 4 x 600 cm,

map of Moscow, 120 x 90 cm

2018

2 + 1 AP

courtesy of Katya Ev

ph Katya Ev

The live performance Axe de Révolution has expanded into a homologue body of works, sharing the same title (2014/2019) incl. film, photographs, sculpture, email, neon, print editions.

"This installation combines two ready-made objects, a tourist map of Moscow and a metal beam, both of which refer to a performance entitled Axe de Révolution (2014). Here, the map serves as a support for the route of the walk carried out by Katya Ev and Hanna Zubkova in August 2014. At once image and language, representation and code, this iconic sign has passed from the state of mental projection to that of archive through the realization of the artistic intervention in which the two artists transported a metal profile for seventeen hours, from the north to the south of the Russian capital.

The map provides an understanding of Moscow's concentric urban development, echoing the heliocentric system of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, developed around 1530, to which the title of the performance also refers. The metal beam divides the exhibition space and assumes a form of obstruction. The physical presence of the steel bar contrasts with the lightness of the paper. It implies a pressure that translates a form of visual discordance emblematic of the energy Katya Ev seeks to capture - that of dissension." Fabien Danesi, Etat d'Exception, Galerie Dix9, Paris (Fr), 2018

"The beam is newly purchased for each installation from a local construction supply store, while the map was chosen in 2018 and never functionally served us for the live event (2014). Unfollowing the logic of performance relics, I seek recreate the formal tension of the performance via those two 'found' objects. To me, it almost resembles a dialectical image of a reversed flag". Katya Ev, 2024

Related artworks (body of works)