Artist: Aleksandra Chaushova
Exhibition title: Burotica
Curated by: Valerie Verhack
Venue: M – Museum Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Date: May 24 – November 3, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and M – Museum Leuven
Reality and fiction are never far apart in the technically brilliant and highly detailed pencil drawings of Alexandra Chaushova (1985, Bulgaria). She sets out in her work to uncover the mechanisms we use to give shape to our own history. How do memories arise? How do they relate to collective memories, which are actually a combination of many individual, subjective stories? In her graphic work, Chaushova acts at times like a virus gradually taking control of archive documents.
For her very first solo museum exhibition, Chaushova is presenting both existing work and a series of new drawings. In these pastels on dark painted paper, she focuses on the intrinsic meaning of bureaucracy and the everyday objects that can symbolize it. The artist transforms the banality of a penholder, stapler or hole-puncher into ominous symptoms of pigeonholing and mindless administration, by playing with magnification, light and shade, and perspective.
