Alina Chaiderov, the winner of the fifteenth edition of the Premio illy at Present Future section of Artissima 2015, and Antoine Levi, from Galerie Antoine Levi in Paris, have met rather unusually. Levi, an up-and-coming gallerist, was randomly browsing photographs on Instagram, when Alina Chaiderov’s photos have caught his eye. That was less than one year ago. Then he contacted her, asked if she was represented by some gallery, they’ve talked, and, voila, fast forward one year, Alina Chaiderov’s pieces are displayed at Galerie Antoine Levi’s booth at Artissima, and they’ve already won one prize.
The Cage of Glass
Alina Chaiderov’s works at Artissima are actually two installations. The first one, named The Cage of Glass, contains protecting materials, like foam, blankets and air bubbles. These materials are, ironically, closed inside the cage of glass, so, instead of protecting it, the glass seam to protect them – they have been almost geologically layered inside the cage. Alina wanted to tell us that, just like some people extract layers of ground from the soil, Alina extracted this from her studio.
Ricardo Martinez
