Misha Ilin

Biography

Misha Ilin (b. 1985; Protvino, Russia) studied art at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia. In 2016 he moved to the United States to pursue his art career and earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, in 2019. Misha has recently exhibited at M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; the kitchen, Berlin, Germany Modern Art Museum Shanghai, Shanghai, China; and Washington Project for Arts, Washington, DC, among other venues. Misha currently lives and works in New York, NY.

Artist Statement

My interdisciplinary practice investigates constructed realities as forms of human, environmental responses to excessive authority and control. The interactive spaces I create are primarily constructed through situational criteria informed by contemporary dilemmas, such as exploitative labor, social inequality, and exhausting immigration procedures. In addition to written parameters, my work engages with performed prompts, sculpture, and installations in which I often embed metanarratives and the aesthetics of folklore and gaming culture. Themes of fantasy blur the line between lightheartedness and darkness, mirroring the strange nature of authoritative social systems.

In generating situational prompts hinged upon individual viewer response such as conversation or physical participation, my work also lends itself to reconfiguration and negotiation. Such open-endedness queries the interrelation between subjugation and circumvention, and sheds light on the ways in which constructed realities might function as vehicles for resistance, introspection, and the reclamation of agency.

Past Exhibition

Kinetic (2023)

September 30–October 14, 2023

The second catalogue of Kinetic debuted with an exhibition at Hamiltonian Artists. We asked current Hamiltonian Artists fellows to nominate, and exhibit alongside, artists they admire.…

Past Exhibition

Pale Grass Blue

October 19–December 7, 2024

Misha Ilin’s body of work asserts that ecocide, wars, body politics, and capital each exist as a sort of radioactive event, altering the genome of “reality.”…