Destroyed Piano

In the autumn of 2014 Zhanna Gladko’s father destroyed the piano which as a child she would use to learn playing music. She was not in Minsk when her father started destroying the musical instrument, however, upon her return she witnessed the last stage of its destruction. She managed to record on a video (shown in the first hall) how her father was dismantling the piano consistently, piece by piece, into tiny details. Maybe, he was feeling guilty for what he did and that is why he did not forbid the artist to film this process, hence, he became an “actor” of his own “performance.”
In the exhibition of 2014 Zhanna Gladko destroyed her father’s hunting bandolier and by destruction tried to reach a creative reconciliation. The same happened when the musical instrument was destroyed – he did not just destroy the piano, in his opinion he left the most valuable parts of it, pedals and strings, to her and also created a table with few of the details.

Zhanna Gladko is presenting an installation consisting of the objects “created” by her father – strings that were saved, two pedals of the piano, the table and the video documentation of her father’s “action,” accompanied by the sound of destructing the musical instrument. She is intensifying the representation and conceptual codes of the “found objects” by making the strings as the symbol of the relationship in time and the pedals – as metaphors for a dialogue. The artist tried to overcome the documental character of the collected material. The installation is enriched with a sound recording, where we hear how young Zhanna is learning Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Children’s Album” piano miniatures: “The Sick Doll,” “The Doll’s Funeral,” “The New Doll.”

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