Day 112
A message from Fedor Konyukhov:
“I have crossed the 52 degrees South latitude. No-one has ever come this far South solo in a rowboat. The last 48 hours were difficult. The wind kept the boat and me under pressure, while it stormed and snowed. The boat is coated in wet snow, and it is bitterly cold. I haven’t seen any icebergs, but the latitudes and temperature are right for them to be in the area. When I was sailing on the “Alye Parusa” yacht in 2008, they were drifting here.
Something unusual happened last night. The boat drifted into a bloom of jellyfish. The waves stopped beating against the hull and only the wind kept whistling over the deck. I was taken aback. I’ve become used to the boat and the hull being continuously struck. It was the pitch dark night on deck, and suddenly the waves stopped striking. What could be happening? I turned on my flashlight and crawled carefully onto the deck. Shining the flashlight as far as it would allow, I could see that the surface was densely covered in large jellyfish. I climbed into the cabin and waited. About half an hour later the wind carried the boat out of the bloom and into clear water. The usual beating of the ocean waves on the boat, as well as the noise and racket, resumed. Still, it is better than sitting in jellyfish.
Today is a very important day for me as an artist. My personal exhibition is opening in Saint Petersburg at the Russian Museum, where my paintings and graphic works will be displayed. When we were still considering how to go about this project with my friend, exhibition curator Joseph Kiblitsky, we chose March 28 as the opening date, because by this time the voyage should have been completed. But I was unable to set out until 6 December and today, on the opening day of the exhibition I am still 2,000 kilometres from Cape Horn and 20,000 kilometres from Saint Petersburg.
I am very glad that my works will be displayed in Saint Petersburg. It is my first exhibition in that city. For any artist, an exhibition at the Russian Museum is a significant event in their artistic life. At the end of the day, I created those artworks not for myself but for other people to see, and it is important to me how my work is received – what people will say, and how they will feel about how I represent the world through those pieces.
My friend Vadim Tsyganov has designed unique frames for the paintings, each of which is in itself a work of art.
The exhibition will continue until 12 May, and I am counting on finishing my voyage and going to Saint Petersburg in May. Here, in the ocean, when the weather permits, I make sketches in a notepad. I am planning on my return to make several paintings based on this voyage. When you are under such stress in the roaring ocean, you start to see the world differently and to appreciate our planet and our place on it.
Greetings to all.”
52’00 South
101’25 West
The exhibition page on the Russian Museum’s website: http://www.rusmuseum.ru/mikhailovsky-castle/exhibitions/fedor-konyukhov/