"Inside the Grass" is a series of graphic works and embroideries that pay hommage to a little-known phenomenon of Russian culture, namely the handwritten folk herbalists of the 17th and 18th centuries.
"Inside the Grass" is a series of graphic works and embroideries that pay hommage to a little-known phenomenon of Russian culture, namely the handwritten folk herbalists of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Along with incantation texts, apocrypha and divination, popular herbalism belonged to the so-called renounced literature, i.e. works banned by the Christian Church. Practices involving plant magic were extremely marginalized. Those who copied and preserved such notebooks found themselves under the watch of spiritual and secular authorities. An important part of these texts has been preserved in investigations into witchcraft.
I'm very interested in observations that describe Russia not through grand ideas and official narratives, but through phenomena that have remained in the shadows and have not been given a voice. Facts linked to the Empire's relations with the people, such as repression, dissent and even the capture of women during major military campaigns, are subjects of my family's history, often tragic ones.
My project is also linked to the peasant embroidery of Northern Russia. As with the rewriting of the herbalists, the heart of folk embroidery is the copying of motifs, the adherence to tradition. However, each embroiderer, each scribe unwittingly adds something different, so that, by force of circumstance, the embroidery motifs or plot are transformed.