Acid Folder

Institutional archives use special acid-free cardboard, striving to preserve cultural artifacts for as long and as carefully as possible. Acid Folder makes this approach absurd, seeking not to slow but to accelerate the aging of its contents. Acid vapor acts on the cellulose, breaking down the structure of its fibers. The paper yellows and loses strength, a reminder of the ephemerality of memory as a phenomenon and the inevitability of non-being.

The work was created as part of an exhibition dedicated to the legacy of Vladimir Fedorov, a Russian artist and member of the Moscow art group Medical Hermeneutics. The group emerged at the end of the Soviet era and became a prominent representative of the younger generation of Moscow Conceptualism. Its name refers to the search for, interpretation, and “treatment” of the meanings and symptoms of culture. The artists who were part of the group employed a playful inspection aesthetic, mythologization, and an ironic analysis of Soviet and world cultural heritage.

Commissioned by the Voznesensky Center.