Tamara Stoffers. The street is our palette

Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Dutch artist Tamara Stoffers, whose collages allow us to see the aesthetics of Soviet reality from an unusual perspective

• A look at the heritage of Soviet visual culture through the prism of surrealism
• The aesthetic utopia of the Soviet world in the work of a Dutch artist who has never been to the USSR
• Vivid stories created using propaganda printing from the times of the Soviet Union and traditional collage techniques

Dutch artist Tamara Stoffers lives and works in the Netherlands, but until recently she sought to join the ranks of students at one of the Russian art universities famous for their conservatism. While preparing for admission, she accidentally discovered the heritage of Soviet visual culture and eventually even learned Russian.

For Tamara Stoffers, who dreamed of touching the paintings of the old masters and first visited Russia only in 2017, the “Soviet world” became a kind of aesthetic utopia. In second-hand bookstores and flea markets, the artist came across chic albums and postcards published “for export” during the times of “developed socialism.” The captivating atmosphere of half-empty streets with brand new buildings in the spirit of the “international style” and portraits of colorful “babushek” carried her away on a long surreal journey. Armed with scissors and glue, Tamara Stoffers flew into Soviet space straight from the room of a Dutch residential community, where, to the delight of four neighbors, the artist reconstructed the interior of a traditional communal apartment - of course, according to her ideas about it.

It’s no secret that in the Soviet Union, visual communication - in other words, propaganda - was a matter of national importance. The best poets composed advertising slogans, and the best photographers and designers designed the country’s stands at international exhibitions. Photo albums and magazines from the 60s or 70s intended for foreign readers have a special atmosphere. Soviet printing is a kind of dream factory, where a sculptural group of Laocoon may well be “wired” into a reportage photograph of some event. These photographs do not tell about life, they show what life should be like: people at work are focused, and in moments of leisure they are happy; cities are clean; collective farmers’ houses are cozy.

In any modern domestic lifestyle magazine we will definitely find a page inspired by the “Russian avant-garde” brand or conventional “totalitarian aesthetics,” whatever that means. About 20 years ago, a phenomenon called “ostalgia” swept through Germany and the countries of the Eastern Bloc: boys and girls who had not seen the GDR, with great pleasure, reached into the closets for old jackets and with trepidation began to collect “consumer goods”, which, according to the parents’ stories were not enough for everyone. Exhibitions of “Soviet design” are still always popular, and all this somehow fits into the “retro style”, which will forever feed the curiosity of grandchildren about the lives of their grandparents. The work of Tamara Stoffers is a striking example of the unusual aestheticization of the country of the Soviets. The artist models a surreal reality, choosing the completely traditional language of collage. It is curious that such experiments can be found on the pages of the magazine “Soviet Photo” or in the works of the famous Soviet architect and artist El Lissitzky.