Molly Surazhsky: "Miss Americhka" at Lowell Ryan Projects
Molly Surazhsky, Lowell Ryan Projects
“Miss Americhka”, January 7 - February 11, 2023
A large-scale banner hung on the facade of Lowell Ryan Projects (Los Angeles, CA) depicts me posing in the gown Slava Culture War!, (2022) a work that was also on view in this exhibition. The image of the gown displays various flags including the Pride flag, Israeli, Palestinian, Soviet, and American flags collaged amongst others to reflect on the use of these various flags displayed as emoji’s and/or memes across social media platforms, invoking a catalyst of arguments with no resolution. The title of the work references Donald Trump’s infamous and unofficial slogan “The Storm is Coming.”
The installation of the work Slava Culture War! functioned as the culminating presentation after having been activated in Atlantic City, NJ and presented upon the façade of the gallery in the work The Storm Has Arrived. I wore the gown in a performative act in Atlantic City, groping slot machines, and interacting with a curious public. In its final form it became a large-scale installation that encompassed both floors of the gallery. When the viewer entered the gallery the train of the gown was draped from the ceiling of the space. At first glance the train appears to be hung as independent banners with varying imagery, it is only when the viewer entered the second floor of the art gallery that they realize the banners were actually connected to the gown and are part of one enormous train. The gown is modeled on a life-size cast sculpture of myself. The custom gown is printed with an extensive series of images pulled from the internet. Collaged and faded into one another, exhausting the eye and creating a destabilizing effect that mimics the hysteria of an endless news cycle, which is further inundated by seemingly endless culture wars. Flags inspired by the use of emojis demarcating various identity signifiers and political beliefs on social media are collaged with images from the news and internet. A portion of Mark Fisher’s essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle” appears questioning the ramifications of identity politics and cancel culture. The essay fades into a mash-up of the American flag with a hammer and sickle displayed where the stars are represented, an image utilized by the right as a fear-mongering campaign against the threat of socialism. Further collaged elements incorporate a caricature of myself handcuffed while on the reverse of the fabric images of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Clinton, Biden, and the my face appear on dice rolling off the flag of the Soviet Union—commenting on the fact that there is no certainty in politics. At the end of the train, descending into the center of the downstairs gallery, I recreated the photoshopped image of Sarah Palin posing in an American flag bikini while hoisting a rifle. I poses in a verdant riverbed, wearing the iconic bikini, holding my rifle, smiling at the viewer while various images including Regan, Castro, Putin, and George W. Bush fade into the foliage around her.
Please find the link to the corresponding Atlantic City video shoot, titled Nothing to Lose, HERE.
With Lifting the Iron Curtain, I utilize meme culture, my family history, the act of larping, and an image of a desecrated statue of Lenin in Kharkov, Ukraine to explore nationalism, political and cultural division, and American fears of communism. At the top of this digitally printed textile work is a photograph of my aunt posing in front of a statue of Lenin in her hometown of Kharkov, Ukraine. Her pose is one that is proud of her cultural heritage prior to the rise of nationalistic divisions that arose with the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the bottom of the work between the preserved hands of Lenin himself, the same monument is pictured as it is being toppled in 2014 by Ukrainian nationalists. On the base of this monument, protestors graffitied “Slava Ukraini” along with the logo of the Azov Battalion, which symbolically finds its’ roots in Nazism and far-right historical leader Stepan Bandera. In the center of the piece, I recreate a meme that went viral during the summer of 2020, posing in a Symbionese Liberation Army t-shirt with a rifle in front of the flag of the Soviet Union. The referenced meme has produced universally heated reactions from both the left and right sides of the American political spectrum. Below this, a drawing of a witch-hunt is pictured with the heads of the burning witches being replaced by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. The entire tapestry is draped by a sheer curtain panel, held to the side revealing the underneath panel. On the sheer curtain, the Wojack meme, painted and digitally rendered, looks sadly upon his phone, this fades into the American flag followed by the Ukrainian flag. Adorning the sides of the work is a fringe of cotton threads, mimicking the fringe on a traditional babushka scarf. This fringe serves as an homage to the women in my family and their skills as seamstresses.
In the work I ♥ American Boys, I tap into the western Russophile’s fantasies of the simultaneously admired, villainized, and eroticized Slavic woman trope, while bearing in mind the unrealistic roles women in the former Soviet Union were expected to perform. Women were required to work, provide for the family, care for their children, and serve as desirable wives for their husbands—often resulting in burnout. A younger generation of Slavic women who were raised on this social foundation—only worsened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and exacerbated by the dramatic loss of state-sponsored social services—look to find the western men of their dreams who will provide security for life’s necessities. The title of the work is a reference to the famed Russian song “American Boy” by the girl group Kombinaciya, who emerged in Russia in the late 1980s. With humor and an infectious pop beat, the group sings, “American boy, American joy, take me away with you, Goodbye Moscow! I will cry and laugh from joy when I sit down in a Mercedes!” I ♥ American Boys references the hyper-materialistic aesthetic (leaning in the spectrum of what may be considered tacky) that emerged with the introduction of the free market and capitalism throughout the former Soviet Union. In this work I depict myself posing in a red negligée while toasting with a glass of Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, a cheap, but beloved Soviet factory-produced “champagne” that is still enjoyed by many to this day. In the work, I am surrounded by a montage of powerful western men depicted in the grips of their own vices. This textile-based work is completed by a surrounding fringe of cotton thread in the style of traditional scarves worn by Slavic Babushkas. A device I employ frequently to reference a different cultural time in which women were prized as household matriarchs.