Ilya Rabinovich

Painting lesson

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Paying some visits to The Ethnography Museum in Chisinau, left me with overwhelming impressions. Studying the pictorial landscapes seen almost in each and every hall made me wander upon the roles and symbolism that those masterpieces are designated to convey upon the visitor.

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The Painting lesson - Visiting The Ethnography Museum in Chisinau, left me with overwhelming impressions. Studying the pictorial landscapes seen almost in each and every hall made me wonder upon the roles and symbolism that those masterpieces are designated to convey upon the visitor. While meditating on the symbolical functioning of the museum a Tchernichovsky’s expression ‘Man is nothing but the shape of his native Landscape’ kept re emerging in my mind. Ilya Rabinovich

While meditating on the symbolical functioning of the museum a Tchernichovsky's expression 'Man is Nothing but the Shape of His Native Landscape' kept re emerging in my mind.

The representation of dichotomy structures, visually supported by idyllic paintings, depicting Moldovan landscapes as existing since the scientific and mythological Genesis- the possible Garden of Eden till the apocalypse, presented by photographs and material evidences from the Soviet catastrophe made a clear statement about the Moldovan timeline, upon the dream and it's disaster.

But this conceptual dichotomy suffers from some drawbacks, namely the inability to position Moldova in relation to other landscapes and nations. Searching for maps or other representations of Moldova's borders and territory reveals a disturbing situation, namely Moldova is always depicted as a torn out of the glob territory surrendered by metal frames designed and produced during Soviet period.

Thus the painted landscapes and the maps serve as a metaphor for the Moldova's to redefine their own new national identity. From one hand they reject their recent past and from another they fall into the gap ob being in an empty void.