It’s been a while since the last exhibition—the fact is, the founding fathers of NeNeMu have rarely been together in St. Petersburg for the past six months. Ruben is conquering Surgut, Kaliningrad, and Tokyo, while Alexander is running laps around Moscow, Siverskaya, Kavkaz, Samara, and Apatity. On their business trips, they always take seeds and seedlings of horizontal self-organizations with them, planting them freehand on any available lawn. Now, at the end of this challenging and eventful year, these aksakals are returning with pleasure and trepidation to their traditional habitats and livelihoods. So: The Non-State Non-Russian Museum presents Yulia Klopova’s exhibition "Unbound Attachments."

Currently, the stage of Russian contemporary art is being gently shaken by a wave of projects that could be loosely grouped under the general heading of "mother as medium." Muzalevsky opened at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMAM) in exactly this configuration (the artist son asked his mother to cross-stitch his sketches), and Greta Dimaris held a joint exhibition with her grandmother at Cube Moscow… Yulia Klopova’s project partially continues this trend. Seeking authenticity and solace within family relationships when broader social connections are difficult, corrupt, and dangerous is a persistent pattern in Russian culture.

Nevertheless, Klopova’s works have a number of important differences that should be noted. For example, both parties are independent artists, with their own method, cultural and exhibition background, practices, and schooling. Or that the collaboration between Lilia (the mother) and Yulia (the daughter) was initially based on a different, non-exhibition-oriented pragmatics. Their collaboration proved to be a rare opportunity for two representatives of an artistic dynasty to feel comfortable together, and for intergenerational communication to be established in a conflict-free and engaging manner. The co-authors, differing in age, technique, and worldview, even compiled a production glossary (Appendix 1) to better understand each other. To help Lilia (textiles) and Yulia (ceramics) explain the type and number of knots and pictorial elements of their future works, the terms "kalya-malya," "boot," and "banana" emerged. The resulting panels, objects, and containers, bearing women’s names, tell stories of destinies and emotions on both sides of the family line. The sculptures contain as much experience, personal experience, and visual expression as the outside. To allow viewers to see this, the exhibition is equipped with an endoscope.

"Unbound Attachments" is a project, first and foremost, about how the space created by art and collaborative work can heal, connect, reconcile, and help understand each other’s pain points. It also explores the possibilities of understanding relationships and building communication between people within a family creatively, outside the hierarchical constraints imposed by an imaginary "traditional" or "natural" way of life. Against a backdrop of suspicion, atomization, and a sense of powerlessness, this small feat of meeting two women seems insignificant.

Alexander Dashevsky