Masha Svyatogor (1989) is an artist based in Minsk, Belarus.
She graduated from the Belarusian State University (2013) where she studied Philology.
Masha debuted in 2017 with a solo exhibition “Kurasoushchyna, My Love” at CECH art space  in Minsk, Belarus.
Her work has been shown internationally, including at Unfair in Amsterdam in 2022; the Museum of Contemporary Art (GfZK) in Leipzig in 2022; Arsenał gallery in Białystok (2022); Prix Levallois in France (2021); KVOST SchauFenster in Berlin (2021); Visage(s) d’Europe in Paris (2021); Circulation(s) festival in Paris (2020); Vintage Photo Festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland (2020); Konstepidemin Art Center in Göteborg, Sweden (2019); Obscura Festival of Photography in Penang, Malaysia (2018); Fotopub Festival in Novo Mesto, Slovenia (2017); Queering Yerevan festival in Armenia (2017), etc.
Masha has become one of the recipients of the Prince Claus Seed Award 2021. She has been selected as ‘Ones to Watch 2021’ by British Journal of Photography. In 2021, Masha received the Special Mention Prize of the Prix Levallois. She was nominated as one of the Futures Talents 2020.
In addition, Masha’s art has been featured in the De Standaard, British Journal of Photography, GUP magazine, Calvert Journal, i-D, Fisheye, Feature Shoot, etc.

https://www.mashasvyatogor.com
https://www.instagram.com/svyatogormasha/



Statement for ‘Secondary archive project’:

I was born and grew up in one of the numerous dormitory areas of Minsk where I have spent most of my life. The environment has had a considerable impact on my artistic practice. It both inspires and causes frustration and discomfort. Lines of hostels and concrete-paneled “khrushchyovkas”, a red-brick school I fail to finish in a haunting dream about the eternal pupil, a hogweed-covered wasteland whose poisonous fumes bate the stifling odor of the local meat factory; a dead pig at the bottom of the technical pond and swans appearing out of the blue, and then – the railroad. At such moments a brand new world feels about to open in front of you and together with it – a new life, a new future one can neither predict nor imagine. 

All these motifs and images, fragments of memories, observations and scenes from the contemporary Belarusian reality I have long been documenting become central to my artistic practice.

I started doing art when facing a necessity to transform my confusion and the feeling of loss, my inability to understand unfolding events and phenomena into a public statement and make my mental images visible. Moreover, I needed to finally critically reflect and analyze my experience and the environment that had shaped my personal and artistic identity. In many ways, art is my way to overcome inner silence and helplessness.

I feel that on the art territory, I suddenly gain both the voice and desire to talk about the issues I am concerned with, pose questions and rethink my relationships with the place I was born and live, review some fixed constructs previously seen as solid, immutable, and monolithic.

The country I live in appears to be similar to a mosaic with its puzzle pieces loosely matching each other and when they eventually do, they form some weird random and sometimes surreal images, things, and patterns. I explore these disparities and inconsistencies, faults and cracks, contradictions and paradoxes in my works – particularly, in ‘Kurasoushchyna, My Love’ (2015-2017) and ‘Everybody Dance!’ (2018-ongoing), the series where document and phantasmagoria coexist side by side.

Photography is the main medium I am currently working with. I document reality by isolating objects and scenes I find personally interesting in order to later use them in my artwork.

Each piece of art, either single or as a part of a series, is composed of various elements and layers of reality that I borrow from my own photographs or appropriate from archival documents transforming them into a complex narrative characterized by multiple patterns and designs.

Photomontage is a method I often use to put my ideas into life. To me, collage is not a mechanical combination of random heterogeneous elements for the sake of games with aesthetics or forms, but a way to tell a different story or literally glue/reassemble a new narrative by bringing together artefacts and images that play an important role in the collective memory and history, like in ‘Everybody Dance!’ series.

I have always been interested in what lies between logic and absurdity, the order and the chaos, rational and irrational, resisting univocal interpretation or any definitive assessment.

I would not like to restrict the viewer and enable them to develop numerous perspectives instead. Thus, I see the search for a new visual language and aesthetics within the existing [collage] tradition as significant in my work as overcoming stereotypical and predictable thinking and automatic responses.

Edited by Anna Karpenko and Sophia Sadovskaya (2022).