🗓️December 29, 2014 – January 14, 2015
LUDA GALLERY
📍42, Mokhovaya St. Petersburg 191028 Russia
📞 +7 999 034 60 99 | +7 911 968 64 84
Cyland Foundation Inc. proudly presents AT THE NEW YEAR a final exhibition of the year at LUDA Gallery, featuring a three-channel video installation by Moscow-based artist Nastya Kuzmina, titled “Into the New Year.”
This immersive work reconstructs a New Year’s Eve celebration that Kuzmina staged inside a sleeper carriage on a Moscow–St. Petersburg train. Transforming the gallery into a train-like environment, with LED strips along the floor and walls echoing the festive flicker from the film, the installation recreates the experience of that moving celebration. For Kuzmina, spatial interaction is essential, and the gallery’s transformation was a central part of the work’s conception.
“Into the New Year” was Kuzmina’s graduation project at the Rodchenko School. Initially focused on the rhythm and regularity of the train carriage itself, her concept evolved into something more performative and situational.
The narrative of the film is simple yet whimsical: unsuspecting passengers board the train and settle in—unaware of the spectacle about to unfold. Suddenly, a golden carpet rolls down the aisle. A girl in festive attire appears, lighting up decorative bulbs as she walks. A trolley singing “Don’t be shy, take a tangerine” rolls by, distributing fruit and joy. Serpentines fly, sparklers flicker. At first, the stunned passengers assume this is a special gesture from Russian Railways—but quickly realize the celebration is unique to their carriage. Suspicion gives way to delight, and soon they are fully immersed in the spontaneous celebration, ushering in the New Year on the move.
For Kuzmina, the train becomes a powerful metaphor. Echoing Viktor Pelevin’s novella The Yellow Arrow—where life unfolds entirely aboard a train—the carriage here symbolizes the passage of life itself. It is filled with stretches of waiting between bright, fleeting events—births, weddings, encounters—that define our memories. The installation invites viewers to contemplate this liminal space where time and movement are most acutely felt.
Visually, the installation mimics peripheral vision: the central screen presents the main storyline, while side screens display flickering, familiar fragments of everyday life. The geometry of LUDA Gallery—long and narrow—evokes the interior of a carriage, compelling visitors to move through the space like passengers, becoming characters in the work.
Observers play a central role in Kuzmina’s practice. In Into the New Year, everyone becomes an observer—both the passengers on the train and the visitors in the gallery. The installation also addresses vulnerability and participation. The performers—initially strangers—are drawn into a magical moment that asks them to push past awkwardness and embrace connection. Ghost-like figures in white sheets, like something out of a child’s fable, appear throughout the video, watching over the train—spectral witnesses to this fleeting miracle.
Despite the fantastical nature of the event, Into the New Year is grounded in genuine emotion. Kuzmina was interested not in documentation, but in capturing surprise, confusion, laughter, and joy. The film is a collage, both visually and metaphorically, layering simple gestures to create unexpected meaning—just like the classic Soviet New Year films that blend fantasy and hope.
For Russians, New Year’s Eve is more than a holiday—it’s a collective act of belief in the miraculous. It’s a night saturated with anticipation, unlike anywhere else in the world. In Into the New Year, the artist underscores the “Russianness” of the train: tea served in glasses with metal holders, the snowy expanse outside, conversations with strangers who become temporary companions. These elements, deeply embedded in Russian literature and cultural memory, are brought to life through Kuzmina’s playful and poetic lens.
With this installation, the traditional New Year’s night—from December 31st to January 1st—becomes more than just a sauna visit and a bleary-eyed flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It becomes a celebration in a second-class sleeper carriage—something truly, and unmistakably, Russian.