Lada Kopeika Project by Francis Alÿs
"When we were young, my brother and I shared a 1981 Lada Riva. One day we decided to escape our bourgeois Belgian city and drive to Leningrad. But the car broke down and soon after our lives parted. 30 years later I invite my brother to drive from Belgium to St. Petersburg, now in a 1977 Lada Kopeika. Upon arrival we’ll crash the car into a tree in the courtyard of the Winter Palace, together with the illusions of our youth. Without an ending there is no beginning."
– Francis Alÿs
Francis Alÿs (1959, Antwerp, BE) is a Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist. His work focuses on observations of, and engagements with, everyday life. His multifaceted projects include public actions, installations, videos, paintings, and drawings.
Through the use of different artistic media, Alÿs presents his distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility towards anthropological and political concerns. His actions have involved traveling the longest route possible between locations in Mexico and the United States to highlight the increasing obstacles imposed along the border; pushing a block of melting ice through city streets; commissioning sign painters to copy his paintings; filming his efforts to enter the eye of a tornado; carrying a can leaking paint along the contested Israel/Palestine border; and equipping hundreds of volunteers to move a colossal sand dune ten centimetres.
For the 10th edition of Manifesta at the Hermitage St Petersburg, Francis Alÿs was invited by the curator Kasper König to recreate the artist’s failed attempt in his teenage years to drive from Brussels to Moscow in a Lada 1500.
Technical specification:
Photograph 30 x 40cm printed on Kodak Ultra Endure N. Matt 200g; 46,7cm x 56,4cm; signed certificate in a numbered edition of 100, unframed.
For framing please contact shop@manifesta.org