"My little Gioconda" from the series "Museum for Mice"

Text: Alexander Dashevsky

The mousetrap is a long—standing object of attention and a point of application of Vladimir Kozin's creative forces. Twenty-five years ago, he founded the Mousetrap Museum of Modern Art. Then the artist asked his colleagues to use ordinary rodent traps as the basis for the works. The result was a kind of impression from the artistic environment of the late 90s and early 2000s, which captures personal connections, stages of creative paths, and types of artistic thinking. A tool for abusing mice turned into a tool for capturing time, fixing volatile memory. Since then, the mousetrap as a medium and as a metaphor has never left Kozin's artistic arsenal.