About the archive

Factory of Found Clothes group was founded by the artists Olga Egorova (a.k.a. Tsaplya) and Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (a.k.a. Gluklya) in 1995. Addressing gender issues and fragility in their practice creating situations for social interactions, the artists worked with performance, video, installation, and diverse forms of process-based collective projects. In 2019, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art acquired a collection of archival materials, which includes records documenting various stages of the group’s activity.

The archive contains texts, photographs, invitations, and posters dating from the 1990s to the early 2000s, including FFC’s debut project, the exhibition-auction Podrugi at GEZ-21 (1995), plus Victim of the Dress (A Russian Novel) (1995), In Memory of Poor Liza (1996), Crossing of the Border (1997), Love and War (1998), 107 Fears. Dedicated to Louise Bourgeois (2001), and The Triumph of Fragility (2002). It also features documentation of FFC’s time-based projects. Events connected with the performative project The Whites (1998–2005) took place across public spaces and art institutions in Venice, Glasgow, Graz, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Utopian Clothing Shop (2004–2010s) was a collective practice involving multiple participants that took the form of a working sales outlet, an atelier, a catwalk, and a series of workshops. The archive includes photographs with comments and designs of outfits from the Shop, the designers’ clothing labels, and a text by one of the participants of the workshop. It also includes video documentation of FFC’s projects, individual video works, exhibition catalogues, selected critical articles on the group, samizdat from the series FFC Library, and documentation of Olga Egorova and Natalia Pershina’s individual projects.

About the group

The group Factory of Found Clothes (1995–2014) was founded in St. Petersburg. In 2005, the “utopian union” formed by Olga Egorova (a.k.a. Tsaplya) and Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (a.k.a. Glyuklya) became part of the art collective Chto Delat. The group contributed to the First Cyberfeminist International at Documenta X (Kassel, 1997), the International Baltic Circle Festival (Helsinki, 2000), and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2003, 2007, 2008, 2009). In 2014, FFC organized their last performance, Final Cut, at Moscow Museum of Modern Art, after which the group was officially disbanded. The artists are currently focusing on individual projects.

Илья Гапонов. Eva