Popova, Yelena
To the artist Yelena Popova invisibility is both a potent political issue and a formal device capable of capturing the attention of an audience exhausted by an image-saturated culture. Unnamed is Popova’s first film, made during her MA at the Royal College of Art. The film is a personal account of the history of the artist’s hometown in Russia. Through a combination of personal and archival footage Popova relates the story of Ozyorsk, a ‘secret’ town built to house the workers of a plutonium plant that helped to create the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb. Popova’s film relates how, in 1957, the plant was the site of a major disaster, responsible for releasing more radioactive material than Chernobyl.
- Artwork Details: running time: 17 minutes
- Edition: 3 of 5
- Material description: DV Video: colour, sound
- Credit line: Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © the artist.
- Theme:
- Medium: Film and Audio Visual
- Accession number: ACC6/2014