Evgeny Antufiev at Emalin, London

Evgeny Antufiev’s research has always focused on different explorations of the concept of immortality. Some years ago, the artist said: “I have always believed in things, graves and memorials. I should have lived in Ancient Egypt, where they paid much more attention to the construction of tombs than to the construction of palaces. What incredible intrigues I would have plotted

to take a place next to the Pharaoh’s tomb! I would have thought through the smallest details of the mosaics decorating the columns, would have sent expeditions after the rarest bones and most precious stones...”

For his first solo exhibition at Emalin, Antufiev stages the interior of a fictitious regal tomb where a body finds its celebratory resting place. Here, the artist brings into focus his research into a form of resistance against physical death: a resistive force embedded in the ritualistic presentation of both the body and the quotidian objects linked to that body’s life in a way that shapes a future collective memory of it.

If we believe that artists materialize their story - that is, a story of objects and ‘things’ - in the work they produce, and see in a museum a space where the display of objects represents a recollection and the persistence of these beyond mortal life, then we can reimagine this body, ritualistically laid to rest in Antufiev’s presentation, as the artist’s own body. As such, the tomb can be rethought as a sacred museum space, where the artist projects his need to endure after physical existence. The gallery space becomes the site for staging the concept of the museum - and the objects that accumulate within this space, in turn, function to testify to the artist’s survival and defiance of mortality.

Hybrids of cultures and styles, Antufiev’s objects evoke ancient artefacts and relics that are capable of moving across time. Ranging from daggers to bowls and masks to snakes, these objects tell stories and embody archetypes linked to ideas of offering, change and regeneration. They aim to deny death while inevitably encompassing it... the object itself is as eternal as the emptiness that remains when it has vanished. Past and future things are no less real than present ones. Things are.

What then could the notion of the museum space be, if not a special mausoleum devoted to celebrating the artist’s immortality and the eternity of the artworks he has produced? As a process of discovery, the viewer‘s curious experience of Antufiev’s collection of artefacts consecrates this permanence, returning a beat to the artist’s mortal heart.