After or Before the feature
The After or Before the feature series extends and loosens the gesture of the Diaries — superimposing a "calligraphic quality" abstracted from Cyrillic script onto vertical bars on a white ground. Tut associates it with the initial movements of vyaz calligraphy: before the letter takes form, the strokes exist as pure possibility. The cold black script gradually drifts from orderly arrangement, transforming into mountain forms and cloud traces. Are the strokes before or after the word? Tut remains in an undetermined position, allowing "writing" that rarely reaches the completeness of a text to become a threshold.
Vyaz calligraphy carries particular significance here — it bears echoes of Old Russian and Orthodox manuscript traditions, a more ancient form of writing that resists easy incorporation into the modern nation-state. Tut dismantles it into pre-stroke movements and fragmented characters, allowing vyaz to become not a banner of national culture, but a dismantled remnant of ancestral language. She exists in a subject-position on the threshold: finding salvation in "the experience itself," while simultaneously developing a rhetorical system together with critics. Resisting being seen, yet having to leave a trace — the meaning of the writing act far outweighs the readability of its content.
Born on 1982 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Evgenia Tut (b. 1982). She lives and works in Saint Petersburg. In 2006 she graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering with a degree in Architecture. Since 2018 she has maintained an active artistic practice and regularly participates in exhibitions. In 2022 she completed the Rodchenko School’s Kirill Savchenkov Transmedia Laboratory.
Her career highlights include participation in the Ars Electronica festival (2021); a residency at the GES-2 Center for Art Production “Svody,” V-A-C Foundation, Moscow (2022); and a nomination for the Sergey Kuryokhin Award in the “Best Work of Contemporary Art” category (2023). She is the author of the non-commercial solo project “1024,” supported by the Limonov Art Fondation (2024), and of the solo exhibition “Slow Shores” at MMOMA (2025). In 2025 she also took part in the main project of the International Ecobiennale “Skin of the Earth.” Evgenia Tut is the founder of the artists’ program “Tut Workshop.”
Her works are held in museum, private, and corporate collections, including the State Russian Museum, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Limonov Art Fondation, Ru Art’s Foundation, Swan Hellenic, and others.
Artist’s Statement
In my projects, I explore questions about the digital future and methods of evading total transparency. I expand the practice of “women’s writing” and “minor gestures”. My work actualizes the act of writing and employs spatial means to convey artistic statements. My creative method has been shaped by my architectural background, the study of classical calligraphy, and dance, as well as by an interest in archaic consciousness and nonverbal information transmission. I experiment with various techniques, working in graphics, painting, installations, and objects.
