Lyubov Matyunina By Lyubov Matyunina
Lyubov graduated as a visual artist and as a journalist. In her artistic practice she uses journalistic methods to investigate themes such as fatherland and identity and subsequently translates them in various media and materials. The results are installations, performances or films. Recently she also often uses textiles and particular tapestries as carriers of her work, because she sees a similarity between the weaving of a story and the weaving of a carpet. In every cultural tradition, tapestries are tellers of histories and myths, traditions and legends.
The Caribbean in particular turned out to be an excellent place for her research, as this region is rich in mysterious myths.
On Aruba, Lyubov and her participants went in search of the typical Caribbean legends and those from Aruban lore in particular to try to capture them together in images.
In the first days of the workshop, the participants mapped out the stories that can be told. During the next working process, they worked with all possible different techniques to make tapestries, whereby the story to be told was leading in the choice of the material and technique. This could vary from embroidery and patchwork to painting or printing and photography.The final result was an exhibition of tapestries that took the viewer into a story about Aruban cultural heritage.
During her residency, Lyubov was accompanied by her partner, the Russian artist Konstantin Guz. Together they also used the working period to make a joint film, while Guz also worked on his own sound research.
