< < BACK TO GALLERY

GALEN GIBSON-CORNELL

Siberian Yeti 2015

Lithograph and Assemblage

12'' x 12''

2016

Siberian Yeti 2015 is an envisioning of the purported sighting of a YETI near Kemerovo, a city in the Siberian region of Russia, by artist Andrey Lyubchenko on July 27, 2015. Interviewed by International Business Times’ Sean Martin, Lyubchenko, was able to have a telepathic conversation with the Yeti, whom he identified as male.

An estimated 30 Yeti or “Abominable Snowmen” live in the Kemerovo region, according to a 2012 article by Will Stewart in the UK’s Daily Mail, and many sightings have been reported in this region over the past ten years. Stewart’s article also features quotes from Igor Burtsev, head of Russia’s International Center of Hominology, who claims that the Yeti creature (also known as “Bigfoot,” “Sasquatch,” or “Abominable Snowman”) represents a missing link in the development from Neanderthal man to the present-day human being.

Unfortunately, no photographic or other images have yet accompanied these Yeti sightings, nor can any official images be found at the time of this writing, to substantiate their existence.

However, an audio recording of a Yeti’s howling is rumored to exist, made in a home laboratory in Siberia by etching grooves onto a vinyl-like plastic surface of an X-ray film--date or origin uncertain. The image on this X-ray-cum-vinyl record is said to be the skull of the Yeti itself, but this is yet to be officiated.

The practice of scratching audio or musical recordings onto X-ray film dates from the underground practice of bootlegging Western music in the Cold War-era Soviet Union. Material scarcities made X-ray film among the only suitable recording substrate in place of vinyl, so subversive distributors were able to create functioning musical records on the surface of medical imagery such as bones, skulls, etc.

Several questions linger as to the feasibility of this unlikely confluence of Yeti documentation: X-ray capture, audio-recording, and disc creation -- and no concrete evidence has surfaced, but perhaps more information will materialize in the near future.