Framer Framed presents To those who have no time to play, Amsterdam-based artist Gluklya's (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) largest solo exhibition to date, curated by Charles Esche. The artist develops her work with numerous others, including Kyrgyz textile workers, newcomers, musicians and writers.
The exhibition includes four objects in space, each with its own unique architecture. They are two yurts, a dome and a stage with varied live performances. The works take us from Amsterdam to Bishkek, and back to Amsterdam via St Petersburg.
On stage in Framer Framed, we see hanging dresses singing Antigone Update, a new version of the well-known Greek tragedy Antigone. Gluklya co-wrote an alternative version with Matras Platform. Antigone Update will be performed live at the exhibition opening on 13 October. Matras Platform is an informal group of migrants living and meeting in Amsterdam. Gluklya started the group during the corona pandemic.
The Red Yurt introduces the stories and artworks of women textile workers in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan who work at home under harsh conditions for textile exports to Russia. The dome, depicts a melting snowball. Inside, videos of the annual May 1 protests are shown. In St Petersburg, birthplace of Gluklya, she recorded these protests from 2017 to 2019. Labour Day demonstrations have since been banned.
Back in Amsterdam.
The small yurt forms an intimate place where the diaries of Gluklya and Murad Zorava can be read. They wrote during their stay in the former Bijlmerbajes prison in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, when it was used both as an artist incubator and asylum centre. Although the conditions in Bishkek or St Petersburg seem distant from Dutch society, bringing together these different social and emotional geographies provides a connecting link.
It is hard to ignore the many disasters looming on the horizon: the climate crisis, extreme social inequality, the war in Ukraine and the hard working life of people supplying cheap goods to Western shopping streets. Gluklya relates it in a surreal landscape, where humour unexpectedly appears. She takes us on an associative journey through global abuses, whether forced labour and migration, economic exploitation or abuse of power.
Gluklya / Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya lives and works in Amsterdam. As one of the pioneers of Russian performance art, her research focuses on finding ways to talk about the traumatic divisions in society and the implications for people's lives. The conflict between politics and people's inner world is the subject of her surrealist drawings, performances in collaboration with various people, installations with poetic texts etc. and the Utopian Clothes.
Charles Esche is also director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, advisor at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht and professor of contemporary art and curator at Central Saint Martins, UAL, London.
Data
14 Oct - 22 Jan 2023, Tues-Sun 12:00-18:00 (free admission)
Artist Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya)
Curator Charles Esche
Made possible with support from
Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; DOEN Foundation; Stadsdeel Oost; Van Abbemuseum.
ADDRESS
Oranje- Vrijstaatkade 71 | 1093 KS Amsterdam | Netherlands
OPENING HOURS
Tue - Sun: 12:00 - 18:00
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
