Join us for the premiere of Spinner’s Song, a new installation by Andréa Stanislav, opening February 18 in the Lower Gallery. The artist and curator will share remarks at 2:00 PM.

Spinner’s Song merges music, movement, color, texture, form and video to create an immersive, meditative, and transformative experience. The work was conceived as part of a project to make objects from TMORA’s collection more accessible to visitors of diverse needs and abilities. This installation offers visitors an accessible way to connect with TMORA’s extensive collection of prialki, wooden spinning tools. (To learn more about the history of the prialka, visit our virtual exhibition here.) The artist took inspiration from design elements and motifs found carved or painted on the prialki, such as birds, clocks, female forms, the sun, and the tree of life. The work is also influenced by traditional songs sung while spinning. Stanislav collaborated with composer Jesse Gelaznik to create the installation’s audio component. The work invites visitors to engage and interact, including by taking a small bell tied to a piece of raw flax, contributing to the sound component and dispersing the sound and rhythm of the work beyond the installation’s place and time.

About Andréa Stanislav

Andréa Stanislav (b. 1968, Chicago) is a contemporary American artist based in New York City, NY and Bloomington, IN. Her hybrid practice spans public art, sculpture, multimedia installations, and collage and constructions. Through spectacle or experiential immersion, her work questions how cultural histories re-contextualize in the present, while focusing on themes of reflection, migration and space exploration. Stanislav holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Alfred University, NY. Stanislav’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally. Select public art projects and solo exhibitions include NART, Narva, Estonia; The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh; Saint Louis Art Museum; The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow, Russia; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; 21c Museum, Louisville; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; Jagillonian University, Kraków, Poland; thisisnotashop, Dublin, Ireland; Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA; Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis; Ca’D’Oro Gallery, NYC; Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK; Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago; and Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC.

Andréa’s work has also has been featured in exhibitions at The State Hermitage Museum, SPB, Russia; Center for Digital Art, Holon; Israel; International Gymuri Art Week Biennial, Yerevan, Armenia; Videoforms Hybrid Digital Festival, France; Kuryokhin Center for Modern Art, SPB; CYLAND, NYC/SPB; Museum of Non-Conformist Art, SPB; Smack Mellon, NYC; Art Ii Biennial, Finland; Alvar Aalto City Library, Vyborg; Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, SPB; 5th Moscow Biennial; U.S (Ambassador’s) Residence, Stockholm, Sweden; Fieldgate Gallery, London; Al Sabah Gallery, Kuwait City; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Kentucky Museum of Arts and Craft, Louisville; Dumbo Arts Center, NYC; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Garis and Hahn Gallery, NYC; House of the Nobleman, NYC.

Selected awards include Foundation for Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant – NYC; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art Alumni Artist-in-Residents Award, Freund Fellowship for Visual Arts, Washington University; IUPAH Presidential Award, Target Studio Grant, Weisman Art Museum; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency; McKnight Artists Fellowship; and the Jerome Artist Fellowship. For the past decade, Andréa has worked extensively in St. Petersburg, Russia on projects and research focused on the creative production during the Siege of Leningrad and Soviet and Russian space exploration. Andréa Stanislav is an Associate Professor at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, and affiliate faculty in the Russian and Eastern European Institute (REEI) at Indiana University – Bloomington.

About Jesse Gelaznik

Jesse Gelaznik (b. 1979) is a self-taught composer and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He has a long history of composing and performing live soundtracks with his performance art collective Dirty Churches as well as collaborating with various musicians, artists, and poets. His music has been commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation, HUB New Music, Experiments in Opera, the Sembrich Opera Museum, Andréa Stanislav and the Mattress Factory Museum, Whitebox Gallery, LaMaMa Galleria, and Brooklyn Arts Council. His music for film has been screened at Sundance and MoMA and his music for theater has premiered at La MaMa. He currently studies modal counterpoint with Judith Berkson. Jesse also played alto guitar for Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar symphony Hallucination City. www.jessegelaznik.com