SASHAPASHA

SASHAPASHA is a Helsinki-based artistic duo created in 2009 in St.Petersburg by Sasha Rotts (born 1985) and Pavel Rotts (born 1982). Artists work in various media: installation, performance, painting, sculpture, sound art, video art etc. In their practice, the duo works with personal and collective memory, and microhistory and explores the legacy of the Soviets in contemporary culture and the historical trauma of the Gulag system.

In Finland duo’s projects were presented in places like Lappeenranta Art Museum and Joensuu Art Museum on the festivals such as the Ars-Häme Summer Exhibition, and Mänttä Art Festival and galleries such as HUUTO, Stoa, Exhibition Laboratory, Acusmata and others. The New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre, Erarta Museum, Luda Gallery, Art reFlex gallery in Russia.

Many of the duo’s site-specific projects have been realised in international artist residencies such as Zarya AIR, Vladivostok, Russia; PolArt residency, Norilsk, Russia; Utö residency, Åland Islands, Finland and NART, Narva, Estonia.

Current and upcoming exhibitions

The third M_itä? Biennale in Joensuu 13 May–17 September 2023, Disconnected Space Research Group (Jaakko Ruuska, Kati Korosuo, Timo Jokitalo, Hanna Koikkalainen and Pavel Rotts)
XXVII Mänttä Art Festival 11 June–31 Aug 2023

Projects

**KANAVA** Over the duration of this project, artist duo SASHAPASHA has been working in different places around Russia researching the history and impact of the Gulag.

**Valentina Kozinets – The Letter D** In 2018, in Sovpolye village we found the home of Valentina Kozinets, an outsider artist who died in 2016. Paintings and notebooks inside the home were doomed to be thrown away. We took the finds with us to preserve the artist's heritage.

**ПАРАДНАЯ/RAPPU** Rappu is an interactive installation that invites visitors to enter into a typical Russian apartment block.

**A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Russian Idea** In summer 2015 artists duet SASHAPASHA took a long road trip through Russia. Throughout their trip, they collected various items and created art objects based on their findings.

Personal pages

Early works

**Radian Church** The work's central theme became the material itself, its plastics and the process of working with it.

**Other Shores** The creative process is a stream that occasionally washes ashore peculiar artefacts. All items in this collection are made from found objects, fragments of chance.