TCHOTCHKE
ЧАЧКИ

For her exhibition, “Tchotchke”, Nevena Ekimova is keeping it sweet and
silly. Surrounded by supposed “supernerds”, she takes the rare opportunity
to frolic in her own geekiness and come up with wildly playful ideas, unboun-
ded by any constraints, apparent or implied, of white cube art. After chatting
with each member of the office staff about their objects of interest, love and
obsession, she steps into their shoes and creates an object that is uniquely
theirs – a tchotchke, a talisman, an inevitable amalgamation of actual feed-
back and her own fantasies about their life. To create a personal and homely
environment in the ascetic office space, she draws from childhood nostalgia
and meme culture, uses techniques varying from wool felting to AI image
curation, and picks the brains of famous minds like Baron Munchhausen
and GPT-4.

Text: Viktoria Draganova
Image: Nevena Ekimova, © The artist