Exploring the post-post soviet, “How long does it take to get a hug” navigates the infrastructural and emotional residue space through bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic ephemera with the goal of asking the question: “Can bureaucracy make two people hold hands?”
To expand on how bureaucratic spaces see humans and vice versa, the project creates a buffer zone of waiting in a museum space. The exhibition creates two different zones of interference, where (1) at the entrance guests are greeted through a checkpoint to receive their receipts and (2) where at the exhibition space the guests are invited to participate in a waiting limbo. Drawing clues from post-post soviet technologies, bureaucratic (mis)uses of those technologies and national production followed by these (mis)uses, the exhibit imitates a proportionally blown out version of an aimless waiting room.
Installed as a part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition exhibited in The Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Curated by Misa Jeffereis (Associate Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis), Egbert Vongmalaithong (Assistant Curator, ICA at VCU), and Chase Westfall (Head of Gallery and Exhibitions, VCUarts Qatar), the 2025 exhibition reveals a cross-section of emergent practices that are rooted in collaboration, experimentation, and the urgency to make meaning in an ever-changing world.
