Destined to be Happy
2016
GRAD, London, UK

Building on her training as a set-designer and exploring multiple social discrepancies between intrinsic and extrinsic well-being, Korina has created six sculptural characters ranging from Love to Rainbow that are placed in the unconventional, even hostile, habitat. The audience will experience the macabre reality of Korina’s greyscale domain, punctuated with characters whose emotional relatability is laid bare for scrutiny. What were once symbols of comfort have been stripped of their warmth, forcing the participants to confront their own socio-political complacency. Juxtaposing concepts of global and local, epic and colloquial, physical and virtual, Korina continues her anthropological research into the paradoxes of human behavior. Through her pseudo-monumental and deceitfully joyous installations Korina addresses urgent issues such as collective memory, cultural and social history and challenges our traditional perceptions of everyday routine. The title of the exhibition Destined to be Happy refers to the British documentary directed by Sergey Miroshnichenko. Following in the tradition of the original UK Up Series, this documentary, initiated in 1987, revisits a group from the now former Soviet Union and tracks their development against a backdrop of social and political change every seven years.

Photo: Natalia Tarasova