Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter
In Ruins/“In Search of Identity”
The project In Ruins/“In Search of Identity” is a continuation of Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter’s research on the post-Soviet space and of the search for her own identity, considered in a wider socio-political context. Fiodorova-Lefter was born and raised in Soviet Moldova but her formation as an artist happened in the 2000s. Her artistic exploration focuses on the lost Soviet identity and the construction of a new one, this time as a Moldovan woman facing new social, political, and economic problems. Identity is cut and reshaped by the historical process – a process that is complex and dynamic, constantly changing under the influence of various historical, cultural, social, and personal factors. Fiodorova-Lefter explores the traces of the reverse side of the Soviet modernization project, but also the emergence of neoliberal globalism and the associated challenges. To rethink the Soviet project through decolonial discourse and writing, artists seek to reclaim and reconnect with their cultural, historical, and ancestral roots. In doing so, Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter collects fragments and scattered beads of her identity and carefully resumes her memories to reassemble what has been lost.
Text: Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter
Я, ТЫ, ОН, ОНА/I, YOU, HE, SHE
by Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter
I decolonize myself
You decolonize yourself
He/ She decolonizes himself/herself
We decolonize ourselves
They decolonize themselves
The whole world decolonizes itself.
Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter is an artist, cultural worker, curator, and teacher from the Republic of Moldova. As an artist, she uses a wide variety of media, including drawing, painting, installation, photography, and performance art, makes artist books and realizes interdisciplinary projects. She works with participatory social practices to engage with and comment on contemporary political and social issues. Driven by her interest in social and political history, she focuses on the post-Soviet transition as well as issues of gender and post-Soviet identity, and engages with questions of colonialism and globalization. Positioning herself as a post-socialist subject, the artist relates to a critical discourse for understanding her identity through post-soviet experience in the frame of everyday global coloniality, understood as an integral feature of modernity. According to Fiodorova-Lefter, this subject is placed in a rapidly changing post-capitalist world that has been experiencing colossal, contradictory, and complex transformations for the past three decades. By critically assessing the situation of assigning each person a specific place in the existing world hierarchy, the artist questions her role in this new global world architecture. Since 2008, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions and festivals across Europe. In 2023 she created the Nomad Bureau for Art Research – a platform and nomadic artist-run space in Chisinau.
www.tatianafiodorova.wordpress.com
https://www.instagram.com/tfiodorova_lefter/