Alex A. Renoire
There is a nice concept I recently heard on TED – “multipotentialite”. Multipotentialite people are interested in many things in life and can pursue multiple life goals. So, one of my life goals is to promote positive social change, and I address this topic in art, as well as in my academic activities, as well as in my volunteering practice. I am also interested in nation states and how they are perceived, in inequalities produced by capitalism, in climate change and ecology problems. I have lived in various countries, but most profoundly I am acquainted with Russia, Israel and Tajikistan. I have studied various things in my life: applied mathematics, music theory, silk painting, anthropology, documentary photography, etc. As for my art, I am often dealing with graphic and textual images.
Links: http://alexarenoire.one
During the times of war, nobody remembers when it started. However when it ends, the events get revived in the memory. So as to illustrate the process of remembering, I depicted in the following collages the atmosphere which surrounded me during certain moments in time. The first image narrates about me travelling in Serbia and hearing about the war in Abkhazia in 2008. The second image narrates about me staying in Israel being hosted by my friends, when I heared about Russia annexing Crimea. The third picture is about me doing fieldwork in Tajikistan, when I heared that Russia invaded Ukraine. The three parts don’t provide the information about the place of the memory via the very objects depicted, the objects don’t bear any trace of national belonging, they are universal like everybody’s daily experience. The place is designated by the pieces of the torn newspaper and the language used in that newspaper (this is underscore that I heared about the malicious events in the languages of the countries where I stayed). The objects depicted represent the visual memory of hearing about the events of commencement of wars. I also use pieces from my diary describing the memories from those days. Black and white color scheme is used to highligh the tragic nature of the events.
