«Oil head»

My name is Maria Izotova, and I’m from Moscow, but already for six years I have been living and working in Germany. I am an architect and I also try to develop myself in the direction of art.

For your selection, I want to present one of my works, it calls «Oil head».

About the work:

In Russia the issue of oil, it is a special issue. In Russia, we say, Russia sits on the oil needle. Unfortunately, Russia produces almost nothing, the economy of the country is too weak. The people have very low living conditions. In the same time, the profits of the oil production are very high. For many years, these profits have gone into the pockets of very few people and lay on their bank accounts. The country doesn’t develop, because the citizen almost don’t participate. Russia had almost 30 years to develop the country, using the income of the oil, but they didn’t do that. 

In my work, I wanted to visualize a portrait of the person, who puts all this multi-billion petrodollars in his wide trousers. Who are this «wonderful» people, who easily spent so much money for their golden toilets. All this brought me to the idea of my work «Oil head».

Who is this man  with an oil head, how does he live in this ugly mass of his vulgar life, in the complete impunity, when across the street, the people who have the same rights are humiliated by poverty and injustice. Who is this hero of the time, the arbiter of the human souls? 

Obviously, he’s the authority here and everyone wants to obey him. The theme of the power, submission and humiliation is so deeply stuck in Russian people, that it constantly raises this type of the people to the top of the social pyramid. Often, such individuals show totally loyalty to the violence, inhumanity and injustice, what is usually accepted in Russia as an indicator of power. Russians can refer to their fate, or the special Russian way, but in reality they choose this kind of the people to control their lives.