Review: Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts

Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts
Vladimir Arkhipov (Fuel)

Home-Made is a rare glimpse into the world of curious folk inventions created during the period of Soviet Russia's chronic consumer shortages. Collecting these specimens since the early 90's, Dr.Arkhipov has traveled extensively throughout parts of the former Soviet Union to document the maker's story and what necessity drove them to create. Complete with anecdotes and photographs of the makers, Dr. Arkhipov examines how 'each person who can make something with his hands prefers to make something small and concrete rather than uniting with others to change their lives. Everyone still struggles with their own problems alone.' Or as Susan Glasser of the Washington Post puts it, Arkhipov "connects his collection directly to the individual Russian experience in an oppressive state." Innovative and witty these "artifacts of Soviet culture" are unique to the dire economic situation of Soviet times and, as well, are an amalgamation of ingenuity; the found object and the resulting solution. Equally, there is an interesting dichotomy between how we understand the object contemporaneously and how it has been re-envisioned in an amateur or folk-ish way. A personal standout was a shovel made from a crutch and the spear end of a broken spade, which was once used to remove rubbish from a health clinic. I also found a romantic aspect to these objects, like the bath plug harvested from scrap micropore and a bent fork, which was so well-used and cared for that it was in essence part part of the family. Relics from an earlier time, the objects tell of the socio-anthropological need to create, be it toys for the children, a passion for photography and film, or survival in a Russian gulag.

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