Filing System

25×25 sm, paper, aquagrim

2023 — 2024

The “Filing System” series continues the cycle of projects by Alina Kugush about bugs/people/mistakes under the common name House of Bugs.

The new series was born out of the artist’s performative practice, in which she paints her face in order to transform into an artistic image. It was the sketches of such make-up that inspired a series of recorded and framed ones, entered into a file. “Filing System” continues the “Archive” series of printed black-and-white graphics which was created for a project at the Nabokov Museum in 2022  — being its colored “facade” part.

A pencil caption under each portrait indicates the species and distribution range, even the specific area of Russia where that particular “butterfly” was discovered. Unlike “Great Men” by Marlene Dumas, to which the series is a homage, the portraits in “Filing System” are not specific. Despite the abundance of indicated data, these are not portraits of famous others, but of anyone — any of us.

The series was first presented at the Cosmoscow' 23  Art Fair at the Sistema Gallery stand