Polina Medvedeva

Working on the intersection of film, audiovisual installation and live performance, Polina Medvedeva (NL/NO) explores practices often considered “informal” or “non-conformist,” embracing the complexities through which vernacular and lived experience transcend rigid categories of inside/outside, belonging/exclusion and formality/informality. Her focus on the tactics of civil disobedience and mechanisms of self-sufficiency – improvised, passed through generations as oral histories, smuggled in through migration – speaks of the (im)possibilities of existing within while being against systems of oppression. 

During the local AIR residency Polina experimented with various techniques of working with glass, in the end focussing on producing a series of beetroot sculptures. Hanging from the ceiling, speculating on the audience’s position, these will be exhibited as part of her solo show at Lydgalleriet in the fall of 2023. The glass sculptures were further developed to house audio responsive LEDs which will interact with the sound installation ‘A Knock From Below Heard At The Bottom’ developed at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.