False Milk

Anna Samoylova’s exhibition unfolds the story of the most difficult period in the artist’s life — the period of pregnancy and childbirth in the era of the global pandemic.

The works record the successive changes of the female body up to the loss of one’s own self, the reduction of the personality to the function of cultivation, nurturing, survival and waiting.

The fabric of the narrative is literally assembled into one large mosaic. Textiles here play the role of the most important female medium. By creating a soft blanket, like a shelter or amulet, it is as if the artist is sharing her own physical experience with the viewer through tactility, while removing the stigma of the first-person narrative of pregnancy and childbirth.

It is childbirth that literally becomes the red thread that unites Soviet dissident feminists, contemporary artists and activists, and ordinary female viewers through time.

The second part of the exhibition focuses on childbirth, driven by the artist’s need to reconstruct memory and piece together a chronological narrative of events.

Using linocut as a medium allows the artist to leave a permanent imprint on fabric, mirroring the struggle to retrieve memories suppressed by the mind. These prints offer a poignant reflection on fear, isolation, and helplessness when confronted with illness and the rigid institutional framework of the healthcare system.