The exhibition Artifacts of a Miracle is a conceptual space in the form of a speculative museum, designed to narrate the story of Yana Sokalski’s artistic universe. Through this kind of simulation, the viewer encounters the complex, multilayered narrative she has constructed. The exhibition does not deconstruct the museum; rather, it uses its conventional authority to assert a new, authorial mythology. This is Yana Sokalski’s first solo exhibition, where museum archaeology, natural history, and art history are absurdly intertwined to reconstruct the chronicle of a single metaphysical event — the mysterious appearance and disappearance of Harold.
A figure named Harold emerges in Sokalski’s mythology as a metaphor for a spiritual shift. With his arrival, Harold hacks the sealed reality of the "Laboratory" — a sterile incubator where the characters of Sokalski’s universe voluntarily renounce will and critical thinking. In an incomprehensible way, Harold overcomes the collective blindness of the inhabitants of City N and restores the lost connection between earth and sky, returning subjectivity to the characters and transforming an obedient grey mass into a diverse, flourishing garden. The impact of Harold’s impulse toward transformation and free choice unfolds in the sequel of the story, in the figures of the Bell Boy and the Flower Girl.
According to Sokalski, the viewer experiences the joy of recognition when encountering familiar images, which become a point of entry into a new narrative. For this reason, the artist incorporates numerous references to the history of art and culture in her work — from Diego Velázquez and Jan van Eyck to the tradition of Soviet animation (The Mystery of theThird Planet).
The scenography of the exhibition Artifacts of a Miracle also alludes to the project by the classic conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers, Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles, Section of Figures. However, while Broodthaers used broken eggshells as a symbol of the emptiness of form and the "death of the museum," in Sokalski’s mythology the egg retains its wholeness and appears as a cosmogonic symbol of origin — one of the "artifacts of a miracle," filled with promising potential. Harold has departed without offering instructions, leaving us among artifacts and "documentary" traces of his existence. This exhibition is an attempt to systematize the miracle, to place it under museum glass in order to remind us that the myth of the hero is always, to some extent, a story about ourselves — searching for a way out of our own Laboratory.
Potential Harold: Original Reconstruction
Questionable Object
Object Lost
Victoria Miziiano, curator of the exhibition
The collection of artifacts by G.G. Avis, a historian studying Harold and the founder of the eponymous Museum.
He is the author of the speculative texts accompanying the exhibition.
Harold’s Observation Point
List of exhibits in the Harold Museum, founded by G.G. Avis
A solo exhibition at K35 Art Gallery, Moscow.
Curated by Victoria Miziiano.
The exhibition features works from three series:
Harold,
Harold. Sequel, and
Dreamlike Stories.
Many of the works were created specifically for the exhibition.