When is the right time to celebrate the end of the quarter-century, if not in the end of 2024? The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (hereinafter, MMOMA) has already done it with its Things and Visions exhibition, where the museum’s 25th anniversary collection is presented. Another exhibition at the MMOMA, Pandora. Unpacking, which is a one-woman show by Russian artist Annouchka Brochet, also shares this celebratory spirit by summarizing the decades of the artist’s life. However, the project’s curator, Victoria Vasilieva, stays away from the term “retrospective” in her curatorial text, rather defining the exhibition’s essence as a “metanarration about art and women”.
In fact, the display shows us not a trajectory of Annouchka’s creative path, but a visual dialogue between her works, which can be comprehended conceptually via either the curator’s comments or just one’s inquisitive gaze. In her curatorial text, Victoria Vasilieva mainly refers to myths; this strategy seems to be fully justified in the context of Annoucka Brochet’s art, particularly in her ceramic series, imbued with longing for the divine.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
The display consists of both Brochet’s newest works and some earlier series from the aughts, yet the bare combination of the old and the new tells us little about the art itself. Pandora. Unpacking is primarily a manifestation of Annouchka’s daily life and creative existence in her own words (or pieces). Brochet’s artistic practice centers around the critique of the exploitation of female beauty and the cult of womanhood itself. At the same time, it propagates the accumulation of feminine life force through the matter, purified and freed from the chains of social norms. For Brochet, art is befriended by beauty, and this is not just about aesthetics. The author uses her experience, both as a woman and as an artist, to sow and ferment creative ideas, which congeal in exhilarating forms, once the phases of baking and glazing are over. In some sense, Annouchka Brochet is a very intimate author: whenever she addresses the audience, she doesn’t transcend her personal boundaries. Both static and fragile, her ceramic objects are enticingly paradoxical. This is what the art philosopher Arthur C. Danto used to define as “pure art”: an embodied meaning that carries internal beauty2.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
Concept-wise, the exhibition can be divided into three lines of narration: work with fabric, work with heritage and work with myth. In the first line, it is the physicality of the matter that is important for the artist, be it snow-white porcelain or reddish mud. Bravely experimenting with the form, Annouchka exposes the tender resilience of the matter, which can be perfectly observed in the series Invulnerability of Fragile (2024) and Girt (2022). Constantly deformed, the ceramic figures keep on evolving, drawing life source from their own humbleness. In the Tussah Silk series, this metaphor is clearly manifested through the skewed silhouettes of the jugs: one can see them hanging from the walls and the ceiling of the exhibition room, whimsically bandaged in the shibari technique. The parts of a jug, precisely, its neck and handle and body, are directly molded from Annouchka’s character. The artist proudly demonstrates this in her Archaeology series (2014–2023), where the jug fragments are placed in the center of the ceramic panels.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
Another installation, Vera Pavlovna’s Dreams (2009), is of particular interest within this line. Annouchka seeks to answer whether it is possible to combine an artistic career with a socially acceptable role of a mother and wife. Indeed, the installation holds a clue: a fragile balance does exist, however, one should not take it for granted. A foursome of tables covered with milk-white tablecloth is a vivid illustration of this: mountains of refined and somewhat bizarre vessels vary from table to table in terms of their (dis)order.
The next line, which I define as work with heritage, pictures Annouchka reviving old things that have been forgotten and even lost. The artist does it carefully though, emphasizing the irreversibility of physical changes and thus preserving the commodities’ spirit. In the Amnesia series (2014-2023), Brochet transforms the unexploited sculpture fragments from the Konakovo faience factory3. She creates new compositions via connecting different shards and beautifully marking their area of joint like Japanese kintsugi craftsmen do. Whereas the funny Soviet sculptures remain recognizable, the indigo-blue, cobalt-covered plates undergo total deconstruction in the hands of the author, which may awaken an ambiguous feeling of tenderness and admiration in the viewer.
In the YEAR 2338 series (2024), the artist’s caring gesture culminates in garnishing the platform at the foot of the New Temple of Beauty with hundreds of colorful redesigned vessel lids from the Konakovo factory. Remember that such a lid was lifted by Pandora herself, who strived to uncap a pithos to learn a great mystery. Although it is difficult to suggest how the future generations, be that diggers or aliens, would respond upon discovering the enigmatic artifacts, one can clearly anticipate adoration of modern fashionistas, provided they see a similar jewellery collection on sale. In turn, Brains in the Net installation (2019-2020), which precedes the room with the Temple of Beauty, can hardly be classified at all. Created during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the series looks nothing but a harbinger of global change. Back then, total online communication seemed to have united the entire world; locked down in their homes, people craved for new connections, meanwhile getting lost and even more isolated in their minds. The installation captures the thrilling vibe of that turning point.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
Finally, work with myth is different from the two aforementioned lines because of its proclaimed departure from materiality. The canvases à la “bad painting” make an impression of some glossy, commercial images of beauties, which flooded the Russian media environment early in this millennium (Should One Believe in Beauty?, 2004–2005). Likewise, the stained-glass painting of half-open lips seems to “run off” the surface, symbolizing the transient nature of attraction (Behind the Mirror, 2024). Technically speaking, it is not an easy task to keep the paint “running off” the canvas, since it is not merely about a vision, but also about a skill. Yet those series primarily belong to conceptual art whose point of critique sounds especially relevant today. The message echoes down from the raging 1990s to the early 2000s, the years of severe commercialisation of different areas of life in Russia, including women’s beauty care. This message warns us to stay away from capitalism’s attempts to exploit good looks as long as it can be monetised.
However, Annouchka herself believes in beauty, the one which lives inside, despite all the suffocating stereotypes and conventions. She projects her vision of the issue in the Faces series (2008–2009), where the engraved facial profile remains on the surface in contrast with the fading paint. Some sketches of female nudes (Projects series, 2014–2024) finalize the display on the first floor, reminding us of a simple truth: the body is a house of the soul, thus, it is beautiful.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
To crown this reflection on Annouchka Brochet’s personal show, I would like to refer to the etymology of the name Pandora, as the exhibition curator suggests us to do. “Pandora” means “all-gifted” in Greek. According to the myth, the gorgeous and talented Pandora, driven by her egoistic curiosity, lifts the lid of a pithos — to discover disease, destruction and death hidden therein. The only remedy she has now to fight the darkness — the one she shares with entire humanity — is hope: ingenuous and powerful at the same time. Annouchka Brochet follows another path, that of introspection: while dancing through her material existence, the artist contemplates the world by looking inward. From the archetypical point of view, it is a very woman’s way, which can coincide with the tenets of feminism or run in another direction.
© Photo courtesy of the press service
P.S. Some of the artworks by Annouchka Brochet can be purchased at the upcoming auction. For details please check.
Annouchka Brochet’s personal exhibition Pandora. Unpacking is on view at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Gogolevsky Boulevard venue) from November 6 till December 8, 2024.
Annouchka Brochet is a Russian artist whose creative practice extends to painting, graphics, ceramics, installations and video art. Annouchka graduated from the Moscow State Academy of Printing in 1995. Considered as one of the pioneers in Russian contemporary women’s art, she has been actively exhibiting her works both at home and abroad since 1987. The artist lives and works in Moscow.
Victoria Vasilieva is a senior research assistant at MMOMA. Victoria graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in fine arts. Additionally, she studied curatorial practices at the Jewish Museum (Moscow), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece) and the Vesuvian Institute (Naples, Italy). Among her curatorial projects are Forms of Dialogue (2023) and Alyona Troitskaya’s personal exhibition Between the Seams of Time (2024). Victoria lives and works in Moscow.
