MARINA S K U G A R E VA
Born in 1962 in Kyiv. After graduating from the Taras Shevchenko Secondary Republican School of Arts, she continued her education at the Dagestan High School of Arts in Makhachkala, Russia, then at the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. Her first painting appeared in a squat on Furmannyi Lane in Moscow, where she lived in the late 1980s–early 1990s with her husband, Oleg Tistol. She earned acclaim with her «cross-media» stitched paintings, for which she invented a unique technique that merged an austere and disciplined artistic perfection with homemade «handiwork». This fresh approach continued the avant-garde traditions of the early 20 th century, merging «high art» with the «low» and, for the first time in contemporary Ukrainian art, introducing a feminist slant. The artist dedicated three of her most famous series to the magic realism of daily life («Tables», second half of the 1990s–2000), traveller’s notes («Roads», 2004–2009), and the human body («Nude», 1988–2011; also «Good Housekeepers», 2007–2011). Her artistic works are regularly on display at Sotheby’s and Phillips. Selected exhibitions: «Great and Grand» (2013, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv); «Terrain Orientation» (2013, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv), «Contemporary Ukrainian Artists» (2012, YermilovCentre, Kharkіv); «The Kitchen» (2011, SMuGа, Sumy, Ukraine); «Made in UKR» (2007, TSEKH Gallery, Kyiv); «Presents for…» (2006, ARTStrelka Projects, Moscow); «Marina Skugareva» (1996, +/- Gallery, Basel, Switzerland). Selected collections: Zaporizhzhia Museum of Arts (Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine), Moscow House of Photography, Municipal Gallery of Odense (Odense, Denmark), Christoph Merian Stiftung (Basel, Switzerland), SC Johnson Kyiv Corporation (Kyiv).
Project «The Kitchen», exposition, Smuga Gallery, Sumy, 2011
77