CREES Noon Lecture. Artist’s Talk on Threading the Needle: Vestiges of Colonialism and Femininity

In 2020, the artist was invited by Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to participate in the research laboratory Space 1520, devoted to Soviet and post-Soviet colonialism. Upon discovering that Kyrgyzstan is a major player in the textile industries that produce garments mainly for export to the Russian market, Gluklya traveled to Bishkek. She was allowed to visit factories and meet with textile workers. The stories she heard, and conditions she encountered, profoundly changed her view of reality.

Open to: Everyone

Returning to Amsterdam, the title of her monumental exhibition at Framer Framed, “To Those Who Have No Time To Play,” evolved from her visits to the home of the seamstress Rahat. Shocked by the living conditions she witnessed, her well thought-out and researched questions were no longer relevant. Instead, the artist engaged Rahat by asking how she played as a child.

In this lecture, Gluklya will share her approach of using imagination and play to explore the harsh realities and human side of labor experiences among female garment workers.

Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) is a pioneer of Russian feminist performance art, and she lives and works in Amsterdam. She uses installation, performance, video, watercolor, text, and research to develop a concept of “fragility” — a subject that should be interpreted not in the sense of “beauty,” but as “invisible strength.” In her projects, she addresses her characters’ personal stories, analyzing them and revealing the conflict between political systems and one’s inner world.