PHOTOGRAPHS ARE A WAY OF IMPRISONING REALITY… ONE CAN’T POSSESS REALITY, ONE CAN POSSESS IMAGE — ONE CAN’T POSSESS THE PRESENT BUT ONE CAN POSSESS THE PAST. SUSAN SONTAG
ZARYA ARTIST / MILANA PESTEREVA

From 17 November to 11 December 2022, artist Milana Pestereva will be in residence at the Zary CCA. The plasticity of the visual language allows Pestereva to work using various techniques, from graphic art to tattoos to stage outfits. In the very wilds of the taiga – in the village of Gornovodnoye – Pestereva practices collective coliving with the DVR group: with love for the land, fellow coliving members, and the surrounding forest. When in residence at Zarya, she is planning to make crocheted a house, just as a child creates a safe, magical space inaccessible to adults.

Milana Pestereva (Charaya) (b. 1997, Vladivostok) is an artist, a graduate of the Primorsky Regional College of Art, a member of the Vladivostok School of Contemporary Art, and a member of the DVR art group since 2019. Pestereva has been living and working in the taiga residence founded by the DVR group in the village of Gornovodnoye in the north of the Primorsky Region. As part of the DVR group, Pestereva participated in the Single Copy (2021) project at the Garage Museum of Contemporary and became the recipient of the Innovation Prize in the ‘New Generation’ category (2019).

Selected solo shows: Charaya (Arka Gallery, Vladivostok, 2020); The Sun Rises, and the Sun Sets(together with Elizaveta Kozlovskaya-Kaganskaya, Arka Gallery, Vladivostok, 2021).

Selected group shows: The Rites of Spring (Zarya CCA, Vladivostok, 2019); What Do Mermaids Sing About (Artetage Centre of Contemporary Art, Vladivostok, 2021); Seven Shots of the Solar System (Korobka Gallery, Vladivostok, 2021); Fun Is Over (self-organized Fun Is Over Gallery, Vladivostok, 2021); the 2nd Self-organized Horizontal Irkutsk Youth Micro Biennale 3(2) days (2021); The DVR Wedding(pavilion at the Marine Station, Vladivostok, 2021); Alexander Gorodniy Is Now Full of Hope (the Tretyakov Gallery in Motion pavilion, Vladivostok, 2021); She Was as Beautiful as a Russian Landscape (PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Perm, 2022).

Image caption: Untitled, 2019.