Natasha Boycko

My work starts with an interest in concrete, in the connection between its physical properties and cultural significance, particularly in the post-Soviet world. Working in series, I emphasize the perceived strength of this brutal material, but dress the heavy mass with structures that emphasize its fragility and inability to endure stress without support. Adding thread and steel, I compose sculptures that engage with the complicated process by which memory and nostalgia impose themselves on the present. I build sets for the sculptures, knit panels, flat planes, to outline a miniature fictional world, one with the contrasting features of flatness and depth that define a movie set or a frieze carved in bas-relief. When arranged and rearranged—and augmented and built upon—the work serves as an architectural projection into the future, built according to the shape-shifting images of memories.