LONELINESS Александра Митлянская / Ale

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Play, download and edit the free video LONELINESS Александра Митлянская / Alexandra Mitlyanskaya, Трудности поворота (Lost in Rotation), 2019 3:14 min, 16:9, sound.

In ‘Lost in Rotation’, Alexandra Mitlyanksaya presents the viewers with a reflection on growing older, the desire for care and the feeling of loneliness. Depicting a personal subject – the artist’s elderly mother, she creates a surreal world that juxtaposes childhood and old age. The work references a Russian saying ‘что стар, то млад’ or ‘the older the younger’. The physical deterioration and illnesses that often come with age limit personal freedoms and create reliance on family. Yet growing older is often accompanied with loneliness, even when surrounded by family, and a certain disconnection. Gradually, there are less and less shared subjects of conversation, the younger family doesn’t understand references to older books or films. The common experiences disappear, leaving a gap.
The elderly artist’s mother walking a toy horse embodies this transformation in a surreal setting of a long corridor – a symbol for life. The scene resembles a Dutch painting, the composition refers to the Italian technique of chiaroscuro, yet Mitlyanskaya reverses it by obscuring the subject. However, the mother never steps onto the bright lit balcony; as Mitlyanksaya explains: ‘this would be the end. And I never wanted it to stop, maybe because of being superstitious.’
Mitlyanksaya’s first encounter with the toy horse took place in a market in Tashkent, a city she visited in 2017 during the 8th Tashkent Biennial. Seeing the horse endlessly walking in circles on a marble floor led to a vision; it was an ideal character to accompany her elderly mother. The artist’s mother was always caring. After the death of her father, the artist’s mother lived on her own. She transferred her love and care onto a cat. In a similar way, on screen she is caring for the horse. A question of interdependency arises, highlighting that care is not simply unilateral.
The title of the work is a reference to the 2003 film ‘Lost in Translation’, directed by Sofia Coppola. In the film, the two main characters, Bob, a middle-aged American actor, and Charlotte, a young woman accompanying her husband on a work trip, happen to be staying in the same hotel in Tokyo and bond over their feeling of being alienated in the city. Mitlyanskaya transposes the feeling of alienation into a familiar setting, where her character is walking in circles in the same space, as is sadly often the case for the elderly who, gradually, stay more and more at home.
Mitlyanksaya makes the viewers face the reality of growing older, loneliness and ambiguous relationships of care. The continuous looped movement of the artist’s elderly mother, the unusual little toy, the loneliness of the corridor creates a scene that is both heartening and sorrowful.

Polina Chizhova

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