Handstitched textile paintings have become a trademark of Tatiana Akhmetgalieva – a young Kemerovo-born artist currently living in Saint-Petersburg. By choosing textile, traditionally “feminine” material, as her main artistic medium, Akhmetgalieva provides it with an unexpectedly sharp and relevant sounding. The dreamy discreteness, the spontaneity, and incompleteness of the picture, the rough contours of the barely outlined figures, and the nervous expression of the bright red carnations bring out and demonstrate the anxious pulsating rhythms of modern life. The main semantic beginning of Akhmetgalieva’s works is the thread – an ancient symbol of fate and memory. It is the thread that envelops the characters, interweaving the disparate pieces into a dynamic whole. Stretching from the open mouths, it becomes the visible and precise equivalent of the artist’s ciphered message – unspoken words and silent singing (interesting is the fact that the word "text" comes from the Latin "textus", which means - the fabric!). Ultimately, it is the thread, free and flexible, that boldly breaks the boundaries of the pictorial space and invades our space, reminding once again that everything is connected to everything.

Anna Arutyunyan