Sima Vassilieva
The Blue Wagon, 2025
Installation, mixed media
120 H cm x 120 W cm x 45 D cm
The Artist
A girl and the Cheburashka toy at the window of the “Moscow–Chop” train—refers to the experience of Soviet emigration, overlaying historicaloptics onto the present. After all, Cheburashka, the friendly fictional...
A girl and the Cheburashka toy at the window of the “Moscow–Chop” train—refers to the experience of Soviet emigration, overlaying historicaloptics onto the present. After all, Cheburashka, the friendly fictional character from a popular Soviet animated film, is essentially an emigrant who arrived in a foreign land in a crate of oranges and had to adapt. In cultural memory, the “Blue Wagon” song became an allegory of Jewish emigration from the USSR and the idea that freedom was a scarce resource for which people fought. This work also speaks about the “genetic” memory of generations forced to leave their homes to escape war and ideology.
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