Reaction as an Art Practice: the Art and Life of Valera Cherkashin in the Sixties

The essay deals with the artistic practice of Valera and Natasha Cherkashin, a Russian artist couple working together since the beginning of the 1980's. Valera Cherkashin started working in the early 1960's in the Soviet city of Kharkiv, now in Ukraine, with a series of "photographic happenings" shot with an amateur camera and portraying himself in different postures and in everyday settings. In his "documented performances" from the 1960's and 1970's, the artist plays several roles taken both from the Soviet official culture - such as the athlete and the young pioneer - and from the underground culture - such as the hippy. He deals with his own body as artistic device (Narcissus, 1965; I am an artist. Jaws, 1966), facing uncommon issues for that time, such as gender and sexuality (Transfiguration, 1967; Sheikh's harem, 1977). Cut off from international (art) history, Valera Cherkashin refers to the Western world in ironic and lo-fi multimedia performances, playing with hot spots of the Cold War, such as Vietnam and Prague. On the boundary between official and non-official imagery, between performance, photography and archive-art, the art of Valera - and later of Natasha - Cherkashin, can be regarded as an authentic and consequent synthesis of art practices and roles. Far away from the broad underground scenes of Moscow and Leningrad, and in many cases long before the appearance of similar practices in the two cultural centres, their work shows from the very beginning a desecrating self-awareness of the artist in post-war socialist society.