my friend, an artist and a curator among many things matthew cortez, proposed to me to create an exhibition titled 'myths in the making' which would have included some of the works in this section
it is through stories, real and unreal, that we know the world – the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we are told / even the most unreal of the stories – tales and myths – help us to navigate the world by making sense of events and circumstances we find ourselves in / there is truth and humility at the heart of every story, no matter how fantastical it is, what culture it belongs to, or to what generation
in this body of work, salimova revisits her childhood folktales and sayings as she attempts to understand herself and make sense of the two lands she is a part of – the u.s. and russia / salimova finds herself at the intersection of the real and the unreal, the evident and the hard–to-believe, the truth and the lie, the dear and the hurtful / in re-imagining myths through her art making, she hopes people empathize with those who also live at those intersections, people alike and unlike
