Anna Škodenko solo exhibition “Stranger’s Home”

Anna Škodenko: “You look out of the large window of the Dragon Gallery and decide to enter a strange home, my exhibition space. The phrase “stranger at home” means different things, depending on how you pronounce it, where the emphasis is, or your experience and mood. In order to be both determined and flickeringly hesitant, you need the space I want to keep for you.

However, there is one object in the exhibition that needs to be introduced: at a time when walking under a table with a straight back was still a normal thing for me, I sat in the kitchen at home. Among the souvenirs lined up on the wall shelf was one with a round-shaped painting. The painting depicted the Nordic landscape. I took it. On the black back of the painting, I discovered the outlines of another landscape. Someone had decided that it was not necessary to leave this landscape painting visible to others and paint it over. For me, however, this hidden country turned out to be my favorite picture of home. I spent hours with it, imagining colors that were not there and admiring everything I seemed to see.
Since then, I have been convinced that noticing beauty is an extremely intimate experience, but sharing it is a confirmation of being human.

Come on, move on! ”

Anna Škodenko (1986) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is characterized by lyricism and an analytical approach to media and visual imagery. Her works depend on the specifics of the place and the conceptual framework that the artist creates for herself through textual transcription.

Škodenko graduated from the Painting Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts (2009), continued her studies at the Chelsea College of Art in England and later at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Škodenko completed a one-year Master of Arts (2017) at the Glasgow Academy of the Arts. She has been awarded the Eduard Wiiralt Prize (2016) and the Köler Prize Grand Prix (2018).

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

The exhibitions at Draakon Gallery are supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko AS.