Soviet-era artefacts and capitalist icons: mashups on Instagram that bend your mind
Image: Andrey Listratov
10 June 2020
Text:
Paula Erizanu
Instagram account @the_inversion_of_colors pairs Soviet-era artefacts with artworld greats and capitalist icons to make hilarious, elegant, and moving comments on modern life.
From hailing toilet paper as a white flag, to recreating Titanic’s most infamous love scene on the roof of a tower block, @the_inversion_of_colors looks at socialist architecture with a fresh and ironic post-Soviet pair of eyes.
The account also celebrates Soviet-era art figures, including the frontman of 1980s rock band Kino, Viktor Tsoi, and Marxist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
But perhaps the most moving collages involve portraits of everyday Russian people. They range from market sellers to elderly women, who appear bigger than the buildings they often live in: a small digital homage to the individual experience of everyday people, and the seismic historical shifts they have felt throughout their lives.
Created by student Andrey Listratov, @the_inversion_of_colors started off with simple colour swaps photographs, “to add colour to the sad Russian reality”. Now, however, Listratov has moved on to more sophisticated collage work, “as a way of thinking in comparison and grotesque antithesis”, he told The Calvert Journal.
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