Video still: Natalia Egorova
Don't be silent! Speak! and The Body in question
Natalia Egorova’s newest work Don’t be silent! Speak! consists of a wordless confrontation between stick and tongue. The stick as a symbol for education, correction, strict upbringing, pain, censorship, repression. While the stick’s elasticity increases the pain, the elasticity of the tongue helps to pronounce the sound of different languages. But even if not speaking, the tongue is a symbol for freedom, expression and frivolity. How much correction can each of these subjects bear?
The Body in question shows the skin as a sensor, as the outer surface of the body but also a metaphor for the border, which divides the human’s inner world from the outer one. On the contrary, the tongue is the only muscular hydrostat, which is able to move in- and outside the human body and is thereby, crossing a border, which other organs can’t cross. Yet, in most of the European societies it is not polite to stick out your tongue. Egorova exposes the tongue in an exhibitionistic way, presents it on a red carpet, declares the tongue to be something to exhibit, exposes it in a white box whereby she negates and hides the context of the body.
Egorova lives and works in Petrozavodsk. She graduated from ISI in graphic design and took part in exhibitions in Greece, Russia and Spain.