SPATIAL-PLASTIC FORMS OF INSTALLATION ART: REIMAGINING FOLK TRADITIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC PRACTICES

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of spatial and plastic installations as one of the most conceptually saturated forms of contemporary visual art, functioning at the intersection of materiality, semiotics, and cultural memory. The research focuses on artistic reinterpretations of folk traditions in contemporary art practices, where folkloric motifs, ritual patterns, and archaic symbols are no longer directly represented but transformed into an intellectual resource of aesthetic transmutation. Spatial installation is interpreted as a media-material construct capable of activating collective memory through the deconstruction of traditional forms and their subsequent recontextualization within postmodern artistic discourse. The relevance of the study lies in the need to conceptualize new models of visual identity under conditions of cultural fragmentation, globalization, and postcolonial transformations. It is argued that contemporary installation art does not reproduce folk tradition in its authentic form but stages it as a space of post-perceptual experience, where material, form, and space acquire multilayered symbolic meanings. The artistic strategies of Yayoi Kusama and Zhanna Kadyrova are analyzed as representative examples of different approaches to cultural memory, in which installation functions as a polyphonic field of interaction between archaic and contemporary visual languages. The conclusions substantiate that spatial and plastic installations serve as an effective tool for the reconfiguration of folk traditions, enabling new modes of aesthetic engagement with the past and opening prospects for further interdisciplinary research in contemporary art studies.