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"At me there is something ..."

This series of images taken by Viennese photographer Wolf-Dieter Grabner for “Report”shows everyday Soviet objects that the Russian Ella Opalnaja collected over a period of decades. In summer 2009 they were publicly presented for the first time in the framework of a thesis project by Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair at the Academy of Fine Arts.

The Russian word for object is “Vešč”. Etymologically its root is in the verb “veščat”, “to speak”. It can be traced back to the pagan rites of the Slav peoples. In their understanding ritual objects were endowed with the divine gift of prophesy. This special relationship to the object, to which subjective qualities are attributed, is still characteristic of Russian culture. This is also reflected in the Russian language today: although the grammatical form “I have something” is possible it is hardly ever used, in Russian the form generally used is “at me there is something”. In the last three years Soviet objects have increasingly become collectors’ objects. But the collection of Ella Opalnaja, a dissident from Moscow who today lives in Düsseldorf, is something special. Her obsessive passion for collecting started when she was expelled from her native Soviet home.

In 1980, before the start of the Olympic Games, Moscow was cleansed of all so-called “antisocial elements”; persons with a criminal record, prostitutes, unregistered persons. Less well-known is the fact that citizens who did not confirm were expelled from the city or indeed even from the country. Among these were many Jews who, due to permanent backlashes, had sought since the 1970s to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Ella Opalnaja and her family also had to leave the country quickly, due to their origins and civic involvement. Like with so many other Jewish migrants their first Stopp in the West was Vienna. From here most travelled further – to Israel or the USA . Ella Opalnaja’s family, however, decided to emigrate to Germany. At that time they had no idea how difficult this path would be. The father was to accompany the eighteen-year-old daughter as far as New York to her boyfriend, and then later to join his wife and the nine-year old son in Germany. The family took leave of each other hastily, never knowing that it was to take five years until the father received a permit to enter the BRD to join his family.
The emigrants had to leave behind not only their apartments and all their furniture but essentially everything that they owned. On leaving the Soviet Union the number and kind of objects was strictly regulated and checked. And it was clear that, after renouncing Soviet citizenship, they could never return to their native country.
But things turned out differently. 1989 brought along the major political change in Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Ella Opalnaja travelled to Moscow – despite her latent fear that she would not be allowed to leave again or might even be arrested – the USSR was to exist for another two years. During her absence a great deal had changed: things that only a short time previously would have been unimaginable, now took place in public. Ella was particularly struck by people’s dislike of artefacts of Soviet culture. She became aware that with the loss of these things an entire historical period would be forgotten. From this time onwards she begain to collect Russian and Soviet objects systematically. She attempted to buy one example of all items in the entire range in old Soviet shops that today, for the most part, no longer exist. She asked friends, acquaintances and neighbours to give her things from the “old days” that they no longer needed. She found objects for her collection on the street, at flea-markets or in rubbish bins. Initially she attempted to use the objects to reconstruct their lost setting. Today she follows a more scientific aim of documenting past and vanishing epochs. Her academic and artistic- intellectual background were an aid to her from the start: before the October Revolution in 1917 her parents belonged to the wealthier, educated class. Her husband was painter, her friends included artists, poets, writers. She herself studied philosophy and acting, worked as a museum custodian and theatre director. Today she sees herself more as an installation and performance artist.

Ella Opalnaja currently lives in Düsseldorf. Her home seems like a Russian-Soviet museum, filled from floor to ceiling with various exhibits. In the apartment the objects are ordered according to theme: in the bathroom there is everything to do with the theme “water”, in the kitchen things to do with the theme “eating”, old items of clothing hang in the bedroom. In addition she owns a small depot in which the objects stored are packed in carefully labelled boxes. In addition to the useful objects that form the focus of her collection she also owns many rare and unique historic documents, such as Party letters from the 1920s and food cards from Leningrad during the blockade. Her greatest dream is a “proper” museum for her countless objects.

I myself met Ella Opalnaja through her son, the poet Alexander Nitzberg. When I told him that I was interested in everyday Soviet items he said I had to meet his mother. Despite a difference in age of 45 years not only did a warm friendship develop between myself and Ella but also a working collaboration for a certain period.
I presented a part of her collection in the framework of my installation “Corpus Delicti”, my graduation thesis project at the Academy of Fine Arts. At the centre of the installation is the notion of “the Soviet object” that is declined in very different ways – in drawings and collages, found objects and an exhibition architecture that I specially designed. The focal point of my artistic examination lies in an attempt to expand the artist’s area of activity to curating, exhibition design, architecture, culturology and ethnography.

Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair (born in Moscow in 1980) is an artist. In 1998 she moved to the Federal Republic of Germany. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. She undertook further studies in the areas of photography, performative art and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Since 2004 she has lived and worked in Vienna. Between 2005 and 2008, in collaboration with the Knoll Gallery Vienna/Budapest, she organised and carried out a series of excursions to Moscow based on the theme of the Russian art market and the free art and culture scenes. In 2008, together with Wolfgang Obermair she published the book “Das große Moskau, das es niemals gab” (published by Schlebrügge Editor, Vienna). For her installation “Corpus Delicti” she received the recognition award of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2009.