The series of embroideries based on subconscious drawings that were made during telephone conversations during lockdown
In 2015 I moved to Finland. A few months after leaving my mother had heart surgery. I’ve back to Russia and spent another month with her and my family. After coming back to Finland, one day I realised that every time I have a phone call with my mother, I immediately start to draw something on a random piece of paper. It settled me down and helped me not to stress too much, to think differently. Today I have a collection of these telephone sketches. When the quarantine had started, I didn’t have access to my studio, to my materials, to my working space. My flat is really small and my working space is reduced to one corner with an armchair. One day I went to the shop and bought two metres of the canvas. I decided to use my telephone drawings as a subject for embroidery. I also made many new ones during the everyday phone call to my mother. We talked a lot and I drew a lot. Looking through them I have one common subject, repeating many times. It's a little green branch, which appears again and again.
When I was in secondary school we had a discipline called “labour”. It was two different groups for boys and for girls. Boys were learning mostly wood carving and carpeting and girls were learning how to cook, sewing the aprons or skirts and embroidery. I didn’t like this discipline. Usually, my mom was embroidering instead of me. I remember one task with the cross stitch method, I forgot to ask help from my mom in advance and she spent the whole night before the examination making an embroidery. There were two yellow and orange flowers and two big leaves. I've got a high grade for it. Since that time and till my graduation from University I didn't go back to embroidery. I had much more interesting things and that way of creativity was an old fashion for me. But suddenly, after graduation, I started to use threads and needles as a way to decorate my clothes, bags and some jewellery from textile. I liked it. It calmed me down and had some kind of meditation effect.
On the different phases of its lifespan, this long durational project was kindly supported by Kone foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland
