Anna KHODORKOVSKAYA, 2018 No one said anything, so I continue No one said anything, so I continue

Anna Khodorkovskaya’s text-based works are made up of words and phrases; they are fragments of their contexts. Perhaps they are lingering remnants of thoughts; a snippet of a friend’s words from a conversation; a passage that stopped the artist in her tracks while reading; or an excerpt from the media. Khodorkovskaya views these as moments when a text suddenly refuses to transport its meaning and becomes a kind of enigma. In her practice, the artist removes words from their context to examine them from a different angle, both visually and abstractly: visually, because she gives them form, color and materiality; abstractly, because their original message is lost, making them appear fictitious or even nonsensical. Mosaic is her chosen technique to realize these works. A mosaic consists of individual glass tesserae that initially also exist only as fragments. Khodorkovskaya collects the pieces, one by one, in order to assemble them into a new whole, drawing on a tradition that dates back millennia. Whereas mosaics were previously used to convey ideological statements relevant to their era, Khodorkovskaya’s mosaics depict something inexplicable and indeterminate. Nevertheless, her working process is deliberate and slow, almost meditative, and continuity is of the essence. In this spirit: No one said anything, so I continue.

Russian artist Anna Khodorkovskaya (Moscow/RU 1985) studied in Erwin Bohatsch’s Abstract Painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She won the STRABAG Artaward International in 2014.