Installation “Water Line” by Marina Zvyagintseva has appeared in underground parking

From June 23, at Zaryadye parking lot guests can see a large-scale site-specific object consisting of phytotrons with plants and pipes with bubbling illuminated water.



Underground parking is not the most traditional place for art, but artist Marina Zvyagintseva reimagines it and sets a new context in her work. Moscow actually stands on the water. We decided to make the streams covered with asphalt visible: to do this we brought pipes to the surface. Now guests can see the symbiosis of nature and urbanism, where pipes become a link between the islands of flora and the grey concrete of the parking lot.

“We have been looking closely at the industrial space of the parking for a long time, because for many people it is the entry point to the park. There should be life at every level of Zaryadye: at the surface we have landscape zones, in Nature Center we have recently renewed the botanical collection of Florarium, and now nature has come close to modern art. Selected plants, futuristic light and the eternal movement of water in transparent pipes — all this creates a feeling of alienation, and even more valuable that now it is waiting for you in the parking lot”, said Ivan Demidov, director of Zaryadye Park.





The goal of contemporary art, according to Marina Zvyagintseva, is to make visible areas that people have not paid attention to before. “When I saw the phytotrons in which flowers grow in the parking lot, I thought that it was genius to combine nature and the existing parking lot, cars and flowers,” says the artist. “My task was to get people passing through the parking lot say, “ Wow! Flowers growing here!”. We had to make a huge number of pipes through which water flows, turn it into a long waterline, and now people passing by feel this wow effect: there is nature here, there are flowers here. Thus, the nature begins from underground.”

Live plants, enclosed in boxes of machines similar to conventional vending machines for drinks and snacks, create a surreal effect. Flowers hanging in the air resemble small planets, islands of tranquility in a frantic pace of life. And the illuminated water running through the pipes becomes a metaphor of vital energy that unites disparate machines with plants into an integral underground ecosystem.





“Epiphytic plants in nature surprise with their ability to live without soil, using stronger neighbors to anchor them. We have them “soar” in kokedams — mossy cocoons that appeared in Japan as one of the varieties of bonsai art. And phytotrons — climatic chambers for growing plants under controlled conditions — have turned from technical objects into part of a living installation that conveys the importance of environmental education”, says Alexandra Voskresenskaya, head of the department for
Nature Protection and Landscape Work.

The waterline drawn aboard the ship captures the surface and underwater parts. This is the place of balance of the two forces acting on the ship — gravity and the buoyancy force. The interaction of antagonistic concepts, including mechanical and natural, is the central motive of Marina Zvyagintseva’s installation.

You can see the installation “Water Line” and phytotrons in underground parking around the clock and every day.