“I am no longer me”: Artist Dima Shabalin about masks at the intersection of fashion and art
At the end of February in the Moscow Botanical Garden of Moscow State University "Pharmaceutical Garden" The exhibition "Particles" by artist Dima Shabalin opened. Colorful masks of his authorship, assembled from completely random at first glance details - from children's toys and old garlands given by friends to baking dishes - were in the main Moscow museums and in the Paris Grand Palais. Despite the unpretentiousness of most of the materials, the works look majestic in their own way, and in the thickets of the Palm Greenhouse they seem to be either avatars of ancient gods or aliens. Find all fifteen objects presented at the exhibition - a quest for which it is not a sin to spend the whole day off.
A few years ago, Dima worked in gloss, was a fashion editor for the magazines Numero and Interview, a stylist, a favorite of street-style photographers - including the famous Scott Schumann. About how this transition from the world of fashion to the world of art - apparently, final and irrevocable - about the power of masks, parallel worlds and what ideas to bring from the city, falling under the ground, we talked with the young artist.
Masks and glue
I came to Moscow from Berezniki - a place that falls underground. A whole city with a population of 140 thousand people was built over the mines for the extraction of salt, which are now being flooded, resulting in failures. For me, it all started right back home. I came to my mom for the holidays and came across a box with children's toys from kinder surprises - there were a whole bunch of them. Then I just met Andrei Bartenev, who always said: "Dima, always do something! And most importantly, use more glue." So I started to glue toys. At first it was just collages on stories, I hung them on the walls. He attached tapes to one - as a result, Bartenev completely accidentally starred in this work for the magazine Numero, where I worked then.
It was unintentionally, I was not going to make a mask. But when it turned out, I realized that there was something sacred in the very closing of the face, and began to study the topic. Alyona Isayeva, fashion director Numero at the time, told me about the experiment: people with mental characteristics were offered to paint their faces, to show how they see themselves. When the face was completely painted over, they began to behave differently: it was easier for them to communicate and make contact.
I felt this effect on myself. We began the first experiments with the similarity of masks with a friend, photographer Ruslan Shavaleev, back in 2012. At first, we just wanted to create unusual images before the events and to go to parties somehow, just fooled around. And then it turned into a photo project: we beat plates, glued them onto masks, covered my face with clay and layers of paint, and Ruslan filmed it all with a camera. So, then, standing with this covered face, covered in clay and paint, I felt that I was no longer me. I begin to move in a different way, the plastic is completely changing, it is as if another person. The project was called Paraforma and exhibited at the Erarta Museum in St. Petersburg.
Boiling point
Long before the masks, I made wonderful hats in which I went to parties, and everyone paid attention to them. It all grew, probably, from complexes, the desire to put the crown on myself - to feel significant. Crowns and masks are opposites. Crown you exalt yourself, trying to show the world, show off. A mask, on the contrary, hide completely. By any law, as soon as you reach a high point in something, you have to fall. My boiling point, after which I had to cool down, was this overwhelming pride, this desire to show myself, to be seen by everyone. I saw all this when at some point I looked back at myself. And I wanted to change, get away from it, looking into the depths.
A parallel world
As a child I really liked the Harry Potter universe. I was terribly and completely sincerely upset when I was eleven, and the letter from Hogwarts never came. I was always attracted to other worlds, I wanted to believe in the possibility of the existence of something supernatural and otherworldly. And then I saw this otherworldly - one can say that in a dream: a world that is very similar to ours, but still different. There in the air huge platforms and fragments of rocks with trees are hovering, and animals and plants are white, ashen-blue and pink. I still dream of it all from time to time - and if something is dreaming, it means that it does exist somewhere.
I saw the first real mask under the impressions of one dream. He closed his eyes and presented. She had no eyes and mouth, but there were bright blue hemispheres above her head. The rest is already invented and collected along the way. The second was almost entirely from garlands, my old watches and Christmas tree toys. All the others were also made from what was. Sometimes they all remind me of dragons, sometimes cyborgs or someone from Mad Max. Postapocalypse, mixed with "Avatar" and Indian deities. "Valerian and the city of a thousand planets". Whether aliens, or amphibians, or lizards - it is not clear that! Some kind of pharaohs - I love their elongated chins. I did this from the glasses for one of the masks. But to say that each of my masks is a specific character with a character and all the rest, probably still can’t. I myself do not know who they are.
Recycled art
I read “Magical cleaning” Marie Kondo three times. I really like minimalism, I really would like to have only fifty things, but it still does not work. In part, I started doing what I do, just to get rid of things, garbage, which is a lot, and it’s a pity to throw it away. This is such a way to come to minimalism, which is constantly failing. There are more and more things around me.
At the same time, the ideas of processing precisely are not very close to me. I use in masks and, for example, real turquoise. And this is a perversion - to attach turquoise with a glue gun! It may even be disrespectful of the stone itself. The word "recycling" for me is an accessible way to explain to others what I am doing: well, I give things a second life, and everyone seems to be at once clear.
It is generally difficult for me to put into words what I am doing. For the exhibition in “Pharmaceutical garden”, we with curator Seryozha Nesterenko wrote five sentences with annotation for several days, it was difficult. When you look for words, the real meaning is blurred. I have to attract everything by the ears, but I do not like it. This is all at the subconscious level — you cannot explain it in words.
Fashion and art
I came into vogue because I liked Alexander McQueen since high school — when he died, it was a huge tragedy for me. I didn’t even think of being a designer, but I was a literature contestant and reasoned that I could work in a magazine. I was burning with these things, entered the journalism department of Moscow State University without exams, moved, worked as an assistant in Glamor, and so on. In general, fashion caught me because of McQueen - but McQueen died. And in the five years that I worked in magazines, no one new who would have shaken me so much would never appear. And I was not interested. And when you lose interest, you leave.
In general, being a fashion editor was a lot of fun. All sorts of bright memories. When Dita Von Teese fell in her red dress from the stairs at the party, I helped her up. As I fell down the stairs in front of Donatella Versace at the Ritz party, she did not help me. As a Chinese blogger, pretending to be me, he made his way to the shows. As Tilda Swinton gave me a twig after her performance, and I kept it. Andre Leon Telli came to Moscow, and I am the only fashion editor at Numero, and I am 19 years old. You should have seen his face at this moment! I don't want it to sound like boasting, no. It was just great to communicate with all these people, to live in the same world with them. Sometimes it seems to me that I lost everything at some point. But I do not regret.
You have a lot more freedom in art. You can speak what you want to say in another language, and no one will do anything for you (almost). And in the magazine advertisers stand over you, you think endlessly, how many centimeters to give to each of them on the page, whether the reader will understand it, as if you are serving someone. And further. So I, say, read a book about McQueen, "Alexander McQueen. Blood under the skin." On the cover are two names, the first is McQueen, the second is the author. Who cares the name of the author? What side of the barricade do you want to be on? That is the question.
Comparisons with Margiela
You can say that I glued my first mask almost immediately after visiting the Margiela Artisanal show. You can draw a parallel, I do not hesitate. Fashion helped me to find this ideal subject for myself, which I began to work with. But the Margiela masks - either a decisive depersonalization (under Martin himself) or just a decorative element (under Matthew Blazey): pasted over with flowers, beaded, inspired by the images of Lee Bowery.
My masks are not decorative, they have a meaning. Each item used in them can be explained. And together, all these items add up to history. I have no goal to tell something specific every time, but for any of my masks you can tell a story that will be different for everyone. I never think out in advance what I will do now, that every detail will mean, even what materials I use. Everything happens by itself when I sit down and begin to fold the mask.
Modern fashion
From modern fashion I do not have goosebumps. I myself do not know why, and I hope that they will return soon. For example, Off-White and Heron Preston are not at all close to me, and the only question I ask myself is “Do I want to wear it or not.” Although I like Craig Green, yes. He and the shamanic tradition felt, and postapocalyptic something. And the topic of wrapping, insulation, all of these protective materials. I certainly like what Michele does in Gucci, Vaccarllo in Saint Laurent and even Galliano in Margiela.
Public
In parallel with the exhibition in "Pharmaceutical Garden" opened another large exhibition "Rehearsal of Spring" with a bunch of tulips and various exotic plants. So there is now a huge patency - in the day, three to five thousand people, everywhere there are queues. Masks hang in the air in the midst of palm trees and scenery in the spirit of Maya - they really live here, for them it is an ideal environment. But the people who look at them do not always understand what it is and why. For them, this is more entertainment - to find fifteen masks in the jungle. At the same time, in galleries, where few people come, and everyone who understands, I don’t like white walls - they are empty, and the masks hang on them like corpses. They can't live there. I would like them to be perceived as objects that no one would even think of wearing. Like African masks, you will not wear it: what if it is a curse? So let my masks, like now in the Botanical Garden, hang like phantom characters.
Career highlights
The first vivid memory as an artist was still connected with fashion. I made masks for designer Ria Keburia - for a collection dedicated to robots and the Renaissance. The show was in Tbilisi, and I looked at the podium, standing on the balcony above it, and for the first time felt such an ecstasy from my own masks: here they are, here, walking down the podium! Both themes, the Renaissance, and the robots are very close to me. Masks are generally very baroque. And I love cyborgs with robots too. So this story was conceptually close to me.
The second is, of course, an exhibition in the Grand Palais at the International Biennial of Decorative and Applied Art, it was called Revelations. There were five Russian artists. And just go to the Grand Palais with the signature "artist" on the badge - it's crazy to go! Masks were exhibited there for only three days, but the very fact that it was happening in such a place of power ... I, when I returned to Moscow, went to Worker and Kolkhoz Woman for an exhibition of costumes supervised by Natalia Kozlova. And in one of the signatures I read that Rodchenko and other Russian avant-garde artists were exhibited in the same place in the Grand Palais during the 1925 World's Fair. Imagine, here they were there almost a hundred years ago, and now I, too, if not at the world exhibition, but still! This thought literally fell on me, and I was going home, as if stunned.
Photo: Ria Keburia, author's archive
