The Accusative Case
An exhibition of collages by Irina Vale combining Soviet magazines with contemporary glossy imagery. Three series ask questions about memory, change and the surrounding world, using ageing paper as both a material and a record of time.
About the project
Irina Vale’s collages bring cuttings from Soviet magazines into contact with contemporary glossy imagery. Time becomes a collaborator: the aged paper carries the marks of its own history, while the act of cutting and recombining tries to hold on to something already disappearing.
The exhibition is structured around three questions. “Where to?” concerns the past and the priorities through which a future is imagined. “Who?” turns to environment and existential uncertainty. “What?” follows the texts and stories that remain after events have passed.
Across these series, the accusative case becomes a framework for thinking about action, direction and its object. Landscapes disappear, cities empty and memory weakens, yet fragments can enter new relationships. The project treats the ability to formulate a question as part of the search for an answer, and collage as a way to examine the tensions that put a person in conflict with themselves.