Vague Accent: Olga Chernysheva in New York
Nova Benway
Last November, at the invitation of The Drawing Center, Olga Chernysheva arrived in New York from her home in Moscow for a month-long visit. During that time, she endeavored to respond visually to the most “ordinary” aspects of the city—things a local might deem insignificant. After returning home in December to make dozens of drawings of New York cafes, pedestrians, museum crowds, and street sights, she reported to me that one perfectly appropriate response to the images would be a shrug of the shoulders: So what? Escalators carry people in and out of a shop, some with arms empty, others weighted with purchases. So what? A group of students attends a lecture. So what? A boy walks his bike up a hill. So what? A dog goes to the groomer … The Drawing Center’s invitation was unprecedented for the artist; her previous work has always drawn from the familiar environs of her home city. Videos like Trashman (2011), in which an Uzbek guest worker collects garbage from a movie theater in Moscow, or Marmot (1999), in which a woman marching in a Communist parade pauses to gaze fondly at a photograph of Stalin, make evident Chernysheva’s
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