Ayar Kut Foundation
booth at Blazar Art Fair, 2021,
Moscow, Russia

The central installation of the stand is a project by Dunya Zakharova. It is a reminiscence of the architectural features of Yakutsk, the largest settlement built in the permafrost zone. All the houses of Yakutsk stand on deeply driven piles so that the heat from the buildings does not melt the permafrost, and thermal and electrical communications are brought to the surface since they freeze underground. Unfortunately, due to the thawing of the frozen ground, many of the foundations are deplorable, and massive tangled pipes and wires need to be designed to envelop the city's public spaces. For the artist, these piles and communications become the trunks of concrete trees supporting the city crown, which at the same time echoes the mythology of the Yakuts (the sacred tree Aal Luuk Mas is a symbol of the triune world, stratified into spaces of people and spirits), and with the spontaneous nature of many urban solutions on the territory of Yakutsk.

The citizens perceive such gradually decrepit parts of the landscape as familiar and natural since they have lived among them for decades. Dunya Zakharova exaggerates this perception — in her work, concrete becomes alive, has natural forms, and gets overgrown. Like ancient trees, warped by time and climate, old piles support a whole cultural layer and hundreds of thousands of people who preserve it.


Yulia Yusma