Olga Chagaoutdinova
Consult artist’s CV | Artist’s website
Born in Russia, Olga Chagaoutdinova moved to Montreal in 2005 after graduating from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design of Vancouver.
She recently completed a MFA in photography from Concordia University. She won some prestigious awards, such as the price from the Fondation de Sève (2005), the Power Corporation of Canada Graduate Fellowship and the Roloff Benny Fellowship in Photography (2006. The local critics already outlined the quality of Chagaoutdinova’s work, and we’re really pleased to see national and international critics going in the same direction.
Cuban Pictures Series was realized in Cuba in 2007, following Chagaoutdinova's previous collection Russian Pictures, realized between 2004 and 2006. With this second project, the artist pursues her artistic research on domesticity as a microcosm of society and as a unique source of visual information where the individual belongings of the past juxtapose the influx of the present. The intimate domestic scenes in the photograph documents the tides of change from the people's point of view, and provide information for a cultural and iconographic analysis in both Cuba and Russia.
Olga Chagaoutdinova is fascinated by syncretism, of how a dominant culture asserts itself, and grafts over the symbols and values of another culture. How do we reconcile the differences and common elements of coexisting cultures for the purpose of finding a way for cultural identity? Both series have one thing in common – the artist's own intentional oscillation between artistic distance and the intense intimacy of discovery. This duality permeates the work, creating a palpable tension that is rarely broken or resolved. It is in this way - from where and how she is as an artist – as an observer and researcher, that Olga Chagaoutdinova looks from the outside into the things that had been familiar to her in the past, visually registering them and sharing them with others. Whether it be Russian apartments that contain layered cultural references dramatically transformed during the past decade, or the reality of Cuban life with its knots of contradiction and historical controversy, Olga Chagaoutdinova examines that within her personal proximity from the perspective of an outsider, an outsider who knows that history from the inside.
Olga Chagaoutdinova originates from Russia. She has lived and works in Montreal since 2005. In 2006 and 2007, she has shown her work in a solo exhibition at the Far East Museum of Fine Art in Khabarovsk (Russia) and in other collective exhibitions, among them, at the Centro Hispano-Americano de la Havana and the Ludwig Foundation, Havana Cuba, at the Magenta Foundation in Toronto and at Galerie Trois Points, and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal. Cuban Pictures Series is part of her final project for her Masters in Photography degree at Concordia University.
Selection of artist’s work
- storm-ache, 2009
- Vidéo (still)
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- stone-ache, 2009
- Vidéo (still)
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- stone-ache, 2009
- Vidéo (still)
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- storm-ache, 2009
- Vidéo still
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- stom-ache, 2009
- C-Print
- 102 x 135 x 0,0 cm
- Peacock on the edge of the building. Cuban Pictures Serie, 2007
- C-Print
- 61 x 61 x 0,0 cm
- Untitled, 2005
- C-Print
- 61 x 61 x 0,0 cm
- Dining table for four (Montreal, Canada), 2006
- C-Print
- 61 x 61 x 0,0 cm
- Forest and a tiger in the bedroom ( Vladivostok. Russia), 2006
- C-Print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 x 0,0 cm
This picture is part of the "Inspiration" exhibition that presents the Notman photographic archives converging with the next generation. The show is on display along McGill College Ave. near Ste. Catherine St. until Oct. 19.
- , 2007
- C-Print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- , 2007
- C-Print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- , 2007
- C-Print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- , 2007
- C-Print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- , 2007
- jet d\\\'encre
- 122 x 147,5 cm
- Rose on a table (Moscow. Russia), 2006
- C-print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- Caribbean Dream in Siberian Bedroom( Mikchailovka. Russia), 2005
- C-print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- Empty Plastic Bottle and a Plant in the Kitchen After a Fire ( St. Petersburg. Russia), 2005
- C-print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- Orca and a Waterfall in a Moscow Apartment (Moscow. Russia), 2005
- c-print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
- Bear, Lamp and Chair (Ussuriisk. Russia), 2006
- C-print, tirage de 5
- 61 x 61 cm
“Russian Pictures” is a series of photographs taken in period from 2004 - 2006 in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and other parts of Russia. My intention as an artist was to examine the nature of the life of the average Russian, seventeen years after Perestroika. The transition from socialism to capitalism in the last seventeen years has made Russia a member of the Global community. These changes have profoundly impacted the lives of the people: what they appreciate, what they value, all have changed. During a time of such immense change, how do we document what is common between cultures and what is different? What evidence can we discover about the process of forging a new cultural identity in this struggle between the common and the different, between the old and the new?
The goal of this project is to explore the visual evidence of a culture in transition. I am particularly interested in the issue of mobility and the collective unconscious in terms of the use of cultural codes. The photographic study focuses on aesthetics, iconographic resurgence and cultural transformation. Alterations in living space juxtapose ironies of advertising. Personal history is re-contextualized by Russia’s collision with modern capitalism. Not only do east meet west in these photos, but eastern and western values clash, deconstruct, and reframe.
In the photographic images, each “home”, each “personal” space, provides an opportunity for insight into cultural traditions, their persistence and their transformation. Each home reflects economic realism and mirrors emerging political values. In this way, “home” can be seen as a microcosm of the macro-changes in modern Russian culture.
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