Polina Kanis "New Flag"

On August 17, an exhibition of the young artist Polina Kanis will open at New Holland’s art gallery. It will feature her video installation New Flag - a diptych made of a video and photographs - in which a woman, while horseback riding, holds a flag in her hand and sits in the traditional victory pose. The video demonstrates the process of picture-making: the dressed-up-young woman tries to ride the horse with the help of an assistant, but she is repeatedly falling off and starting again. This work examines the relationship between the consolidation of any ideological image and the mechanism of its creation: the video heroes are frankly indifferent to what is happening and only perform their specific function, which contrasts with the perfect result pictured in the photograph. Consequently, the video questions the validity of any power constructs, between superficial necessity and inherent charging, which incommensurably accentuates the difference between the worlds of the real and the ideal.

Polina Kanis (1985) grew up in St. Petersburg, where she received teacher training. After moving to Moscow, she entered Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. Since 2009, the artist has been widely exhibited, including in group exhibitions in Russia and abroad (Warsaw, Vienna, Oslo, London, Kiev). In 2011 Polina Kanis became one of the most mentioned contemporary young Russian artists after receiving the Kandinsky Prize for her work Eggs, based on the popular Soviet electronic game Nu pogodi!. Kanis is staging performances and making videos, which provocatively dramatize social situations connected with education, indoctrination, and the use of power. In 2010 she was nominated for the Innovation Award.