Multidisciplinary artist Misha Ilin was in residence at WPA to research the art of social instructions and agreements. Originally from Moscow, Ilin divides his time between New York and DC.

Over this three month residency, Ilin turned WPA’s Project Space into a seamlessly interwoven working and exhibition environment, where his collaborative research process found form in performative installation. He explained this as a “mise-en-scène for the performance and documentation of instructions shared by the audience and me.”

About the Artist

Misha Ilin moved from Russia to the United States in 2016 to study fine arts. Through his art practice, Ilin locates cultural contact points at the juncture of politics, aesthetics, and between public and private spheres. Ilin seeks to contextualize private life experiences within established social rules to comment on common human needs of being understood, recognized, and accepted.

Ilin received his MFA in interdisciplinary studies from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019 and has received numerous awards for his thesis research on matters of memory politics. Ilin’s recent work relies on the idea of instruction-based practice responding to the experience of confinement following practical training at Glenstone Museum. Through the use of mundane materials from the domestic environment as well as a visual vocabulary of situation-based practices, Ilin explores the everyday exchanges that structure our social lives. Ilin’s installations, instructions, and social sculptures render an existing regimented environment and comment on the matters of mundane labor, the value of exchange, social roles, shame, and inequality. Over the last two years, Ilin has presented his works in Baltimore, Washington, and New York including their most recent exhibition at Inadequate Lighting in Baltimore, MD.