ФОМУШКА (Fomuška)

This is also true of ФОМУШКА (Fomuška), the project which was the result of the collaboration between Museion, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel and the Secession in Vienna. The three shows form a sort of circular path that embraces part of the work carried out by the artist over a ten year period. In particular they focus on the most recent collaboration with a group of engineers from the Elektroenergeticevsky Institute in Moscow, who got Fomuška up and running, and which gave rise to six series of drawings, the first dating back to 1999.

ФОМУШКА (Fomuška), the work which provides the name for the entire exhibition, is the diminutive form of ФОМА (Fomà), Thomas in Russian. Fomuška takes its name from the affinity that the artist noted in her work with the novels of Dostoevsky. Indeed Saint Thomas represents a man in doubt, who puts his own incredulity to the test, the ultimate trial.

The title is intended to highlight the link between art and science: both place doubt at the heart of their practice, and both require constant experimentation and proof in order to survive. Fomuška forges a close relationship, a connection of immediate impact, with the visitor’s body. The machine produces a vapour composed of electrostatically charged molecules that have both visible and invisible effects on the public.

This vapour not only invades the exhibition space but also touches the skin, generating tiny electric discharges which can be felt on contact. While in the history of performance art the artist’s body was the subject of study and intervention, Micol Assaël transfers this exploration onto the bodies of the exhibition-goers, who thus become an active part of the project, enabling a widespread communication, and lending the work a processual aspect.