Artist Statement |
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In a series of mixed-media drawings, I use matches as a tool to describe
the chemistry of change brought about by loss and upheaval, particularly
as it applies to immigrant culture. The “Matchwork” grew
out of a description of a match game in Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir,
Speak, Memory, one of the many visual devices he uses to come to terms
with exile and loss. Matches lend themselves to the language of fragmentation
(splinters), suggesting violent upheaval (fire, war), and the shifting
of patterns as one life is replaced by another.
For Nabokov fragmentation was not an end in itself, but became a form
of syncopation, as he searched for rhythms and patterns in the convergence
of past, present, and disparate parts of the world. When placed in
geometries match tips create an ethereal second surface, and a staccato
of rhythmic forms. Linear dots, punctuated by metal bolts, suggest
migration, a journey, or the songlines of an aboriginal walkabout.
Matches are intensely visually suggestive - people, flowers, trees,
mushrooms, phalluses, paint brushes, missiles, drumsticks, musical
notes - reflecting Nabokov’s passion for mimesis (matching);
the immigrant imitates their new environment just as Nabokov’s
butterflies mimic a leaf as a means of survival in the natural world.
Though the work has a violent aspect – the potential for destruction
by fire - it is not rooted in destruction or entropy. The tension
in the work, as in life, is the potential for upheaval and change.
The formal appeal of the work contradicts the element of danger, suggesting
the integral nature of impermanence. Tiny units of energy that can
save a life or kill, matches evoke both the nurturing and the destructive
sides of human nature. The drawings suggest the possibility of global
interconnectedness or mutual destruction.
Themes are touched on from my work as an interpreter for Russian immigrants,
and from my family history; the loss of an ornate and insular life
in Russia due to revolution, re-composition into American immigrant
culture, and my father’s career as a CIA operative. American
and Russian history, from the Revolutions to the Cold War, are revisited
and sometimes “matched”, particularly our mutual legacy
of nuclear arms.
Sasha Chavchavadze
