What Things Are Not
YEAR
2016 – ongoing
RESEARCH
National Center of Contemporary Arts
St. Petersburg
LOCATIONS
Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, USA, Europe
Identity and landscape
Exploring and analyzing landscapes serves as an indirect form of anthropological research, offering insight into local populations, societal behaviors, and the compromises communities are willing to make in the face of change. Landscapes communicate histories, values, and aspirations—but what happens to identity and memory when landscapes deceive?
This project began during a residency at NCCA St. Petersburg, providing a foundation for investigating contemporary aesthetics of temporary spaces and urban development. It focused on city-making strategies that emphasize potential—promises rather than realities. The project later expanded across Europe and the United States before continuing in the UAE during a three-month stay at Al Hamriyah Studios by Sharjah Art Foundation.
The series consists of site documentation, CGI images applied to surfaces, and installations featuring stock images printed and placed in public space—blurring the boundaries between natural and digital landscapes. What is the distinction between representation and reality? How can social engineering practices leverage non-commercial imagery in public space? What role does the perpetual circulation of reassuring images—both online and offline—play in reinforcing the ideological framework of contemporary neoliberalism?
Across the world, textured banners drape construction sites, concealing housing complexes, monuments, and historical landmarks. These temporary facades alter the meaning of a place, particularly when construction or restoration persists for extended periods. When a monument is covered in a printed marble texture, does it remain the same monument—temporarily obscured—or does it become something entirely new, imbued with a different meaning?
Political events give rise to rhetorical wars, where competing powers manipulate narratives to shape identity and control perception. The neoliberal vision of progress and development remains indifferent to whether something is made of water, a photograph of water, a 3D rendering, or an AI-generated texture. It is an ideology as pervasive as corporate branding, occupying both physical and digital landscapes, seamlessly privatizing and recontextualizing space.
What Things Are Not interrogates not only the nature of objects and their appearances but also the reasons behind their concealment or transformation. By challenging dominant narratives, the project encourages a critical reading of landscape as a site of power and illusion. It also questions the evolving role of photography in the information age—an era defined by the relentless production and consumption of visual content, where images dictate the narrative of the present, often independent of their truthfulness.