RUSSIAN PAVILION

Curators: Mr. Yevgeny Umansky and Ms.Irina Tchesnokova

Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Russia

Artists: Yury Vasiliev, Elena Tsvetaeva, group “Karpenko&Karpenko”, Yevgeny Umansky, Dmitry Bulatov, Danil Akimov, Yevgeny Palamarchuk, Alexey Chebykin, Elena Gladkova, group “Common Wince”.

“WESTERN RUSSIA” Contemporary Art in Kaliningrad

“Wild Russian West”, exclave, “abroad”, Russian Koenigsberg, – what associations does the strange territory, which was annexed to the USSR after the 2 nd World War, not arouse. The Kaliningrad region is a part of Russia , though it does not have any common border with it. But it's only the beginning of the peculiarities of geography and history that evoke a sequence of reflections: Kaliningrad - Koenigsberg , Russia - Prussia , eastern territories of Europe and the westernmost Russia … Historically Russian Kaliningrad, the former Prussian Koenigsberg, turned out to be a specific place, a phenomenon of new postgeography, a point where imperial ambitions of the two states came into collision with each other: Prussian heritage, which was strenuously squeezed out from the Soviet city; monstrous architecture that emerged on the Prussian cube; transformation of memory of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the Koenigsberg citizen, into a great narrative symbol of the Kaliningrad desire to merge with the European history and rejection of the charisma of the wild west of the Asiatic Russia. Just some years ago there were neither institutions nor practices, nor obvious possibilities for development of contemporary art. The cultural infrastructure of the city is quite conservative, it's mainly tourist program (from the Kant's tomb to the amber and castle ruin-lovers), reconstructed fortifications, the Cathedral, etc. During the ten-year activity of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts an artistic community was formed that positions itself as “contemporary”, which makes the task of working with the local artistic context and its further transmission burning. The mythic instability “east-west”, geographical uncertainty create a fertile field for work with the contemporary art problems, such as perception of area, memory exploration and significance of existence. Themes and subjects of the Kaliningrad artists that were naturally picked up in the local mainstream rise to All-European category simultaneously fitting both European – western and Russian – eastern contexts.

Yevgeny Umansky curator

Irina Tchesnokova curator