Moscow: A Home Album

Alyona’s contemporary Moscow is an unembellished city. Her pictures include lop-sided old houses, and severe new constructions, lurid advertisements and dirty snow. For some reason, they are neither repellant nor painful. Maybe this is because Dergileva’s city is enlivened by people, dogs and other living creatures that, as a rule, are reflected in her works.

This is not an encyclopedia, it is a very personal album. All that it contains is to be found in the center of Moscow, within the confines of the Garden Ring. But even in these limits, there are no claims to a comprehensive representation. Some places receive more attention than others, some less. However, this is not surprising, for the album is intensely personal.

It stands to reason that there are more pictures of old buildings. It would also appear that dogs outnumber the people. People change, try to keep pace with the times, with slyly winking Moscow, grow new faces — robot-like ones, and lose their interest for the artist.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that today’s Moscow is magical in all these pictures, irresistibly alluring. And all is not yet lost. At the very least, there is an interpreter between the old and the new — Alyona Dergileva.

Alyona was born in Moscow. In old Moscow, in the district around the “Taganskaya” metro station. She finds it painful to see the destruction of her beloved city. Yet this increases the fascination of searching for the human, the genuine, in the new city. Because all these words about the death of Moscow are untrue. The city lives on, regardless of anything. It does not take much to verify this — it is sufficient to immerse oneself in Alyona Dergileva’s watercolors and etchings.

Off we go!