Anna Jermolaewa: Assemblé

A collaboration with the Austrian Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia

Phileas, Opernring 17, Vienna
8 May – 14 September 2024


Anna Jermolaewa & Oksana Serheieva, Rehearsal for Swan Lake, 2024. Photo: Markus Krottendorfer / Bildrecht


Anna Jermolaewa, Installation view of Assemblé at Phileas, 2024. Photo: kunstdokumentation.com/Manuel Carreon Lopez

For 10 years Phileas has been closely affiliated with the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2024 we again collaborated with the national pavilion to support the production of Anna Jermolaewa's exhibition, and in parallel presented a group of new and existing works by the artist in Vienna.

Jermolaewa's artistic practice is significantly influenced by her childhood and youth in the Soviet Union, her activities as a dissident, and her experiences as a refugee. A keen observer of human coexistence, its social conditions and political prerequisites, her art focuses on seemingly insignificant manifestations of everyday life, which she questions in a critical but at the same time humorous manner. The works in the exhibition referenced moments in the artist’s own life over the last 35 years, from her arrival in Vienna as a political refugee from the former Soviet Union, to the present-day conflict in Ukraine. 

The central work on display at the Austrian Pavilion is her new video installation Rehearsal for Swan Lake (2024). Created in collaboration with the Ukrainian ballet dancer and choreographer Oksana Serheieva, it shows a group of dancers rehearsing scenes from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”. Jermolaewa is referring to a measure of censorship commonly employed in the former Soviet Union, in which the famous ballet would be broadcasted often for days on end during times of political unrest in order to distract civilians. The presentation of Rehearsal for Swan Lake in Vienna offered a glimpse behind the scenes, expanded the video installation to include the artist’s preparatory research and production materials, including a series of Polaroid pictures showing the ballet dancers during rehearsals.

A newly produced work in the exhibition in Vienna was the autobiographical video work Aleksandra Wysokińska / 20 Years Later / 35 Years Later (2009/2024), which documents Jermolaewa’s reunion with the woman who helped her escape from the USSR in 1989. Wysokińska sheltered Jermolaewa and her partner at her home in Kraków for a week and then helped her travel on to Austria, where both were granted asylum. The video shows the first meeting of the two women after 20 years, and recounts Jermolaewa’s experience as a refugee interwoven with the life story of her generous helper. At the exhibition’s opening in May 2024, exactly 35 years have passed since their first encounter. To mark this anniversary, the artist again visited Aleksandra Wysokińska to film a new conversation and expand the original work.

Anna Jermolaewa (born in 1970 in Leningrad, USSR) works with a wide range of media, including video, installation, painting, photography, sculpture and performance. After being accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, she was forced to flee in 1989 to Austria, where she was granted political asylum. In 2019, Jermolaewa was appointed professor of Experimental Art at the University of Arts Linz. Along with numerous solo exhibitions, she has participated since 1999 in major group exhibitions including the 48th Venice Biennale (1999); the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007, 2015); the Beijing International Art Biennale (2010); the Berlin Biennale (2012); and the Gwangju Biennale (2014). Jermolaewa was recently awarded the Karl Renner Prize of the City of Vienna for her social commitment as a member of the Austrian refugee association "Ariadne − Wir Flüchtlinge für Österreich".

Opening hours at Opernring 17, Vienna
Tuesday - Friday 11:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday 11:00am - 3:00pm
& by appointment

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