Space for Metal Butterflies | Anastasia Kovaleva
6 May – 1 Jun 2025

About
©Copyright Fabula Gallery | by Rattlesnake Group Limited
Dates: 6 May – 1 Jun 2025
Artist: Anastasia Kovaleva
Location: fābula HQ
Date:

July 22, 2025

Category:

Space for Metal Butterflies | Anastasia Kovaleva
6 May – 1 Jun 2025

Space for Metal Butterflies
Anastasia Kovaleva
06.05 – 01.06.25

fābula gallery is pleased to present Anastasia Kovaleva’s personal project “Space for Metal Butterflies”. This installation is a spatial essay about the coexistence of dichotomous states, about the transformation and metamorphosis of one into another: destructive aggression into fertile creation.

In this exhibition, the artist thematizes the problem of the originality of the environment and man, exploring their mutual influence. The urban space that surrounds us on a daily basis is often filled with elements that are disharmonious and “inhumane.” Industrial spaces of inhuman scale, different security architecture: fences and grilles — on the one hand, these landscape elements emphasize how fragile a person can be, how out of scale they are, or how much they require protection. But, on the other hand, by creating these components of the environment, a person fills the space with the products of his anxiety. The philosopher Merleau-Ponty compared this to the “Mobius strip”: the line between internal and external is blurred, and one flows into the other.

The architecture of Nastya’s installation is social. Like the visual studies of the Forensic Architecture group — reverse architecture, footprint architecture, as they themselves called it, the artist reconstructs and rebuilds an urban space from her memory. Kovaleva materializes this image without any hint of documentality, but with the precision of an emotional and minimalistic artistic gesture.

“My installation is a cold and unfriendly place. I melt the lead into flowers. However, at the same time, I leave in this romantic image a manifestation of aggression, where the petals resemble the blades of metal butterfly knives,” Anastasia Kovaleva.


We express our gratitude to the Foundation for the support of contemporary art “SFERA”