Natalja Vikulina’s show Lines of Correspondence brings together different elements of her transdisciplinary practice. The project investigates the human ability to project our feelings and consciousness onto inanimate natural objects such as rocks, plants or soil– in other words, to animate different things around us.
Lines of Correspondence transforms actual organic material into virtual landscapes that people can be part of. It invites the audience to re-imagine our relations with what we call the inanimate world, to look closely into the ontological order that is independent from human beings.
The name of the show alludes to the work of British anthropologist Tim Ingold. For him correspondence brings into focus not just the existence of different things in our world, but the forces and processes that generate their existence – not just “being in the world” but “becoming in the world”. To correspond is to open the world to our perception, so that we in turn can answer to it; it is to develop a new type of thinking, one that will allow us not just to “join things”, but to “join with things”. In the works exhibited, Natalja Vikulina corresponds with different objects, but also with different materials and media (here drawing, printmaking and immersive technologies are all mixed up to create experimental space), and invites audiences to invent their own way of corresponding with the objects as well as with the artworks.
For this show Natalja Vikulina has collaborated with Russian sound artist and musician Alexey Borisov, who gives a voice to some of the objects presented in the show. Virtual reality was developed by Natalja Vikulina with help and advice from Ivan Isakov. The development of the project has been made possible through a DYCP grant from Arts Council England.
About the artist
Natalja Vikulina is a London-based visual artist. She actively exhibits both in the UK (Centrala gallery, Birmingham; London Design Festival , Multimedia Anthropology Lab, London) and internationally (Philosophicum, Basel; National Centre for Contemporary Art, Nizhny Novgorod; Museum of Public Sculpture, St Petersburg; Shyryaevo Biennial of Contemporary Art, Samara). She has been an artist-researcher in residence at the National Centre of Contemporary Art (Nizhny Novgorod , 2016, 2017). Her work has been published in books and catalogues, including recent publications Tragedy in the Corner (Ad Marginem, 2018) and Art Territory of London (Arka, 2020) and features in the collection of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. She also regularly gives artist talks and participates in research conferences. Natalja Vikulina holds an MPhil in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art.