The VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

Alina Glazoun_Untitled (All are slightly different)

VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art
September 5, 2020 – December 6, 2020
http://youngart.ru

The Moscow International Biennale for Young Art is a large-scale project in the field of contemporary art held in Russia since 2008. The Biennale seeks to discover new names, support and stimulate creative initiatives by the new generation of artists and curators, create a stage for their public statements and, as a result, develop the modern art environment and international integration. The Moscow International Biennale for Young Art is organized by one of its founders – the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. The project started with the festival of young art Qui Vive? (held by the National Center for Contemporary Art from 2002 to 2006) and the exhibition of young art by Workshops (held annually by the MMOMA from 2001 to present).

The VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art consists of the Main Project, nine Special Projects, an Educational Program divided into three blocks, a Parallel Program consisting of 23 projects from different Moscow institutions, and a Portfolio Review Program aimed at supporting young artists from all Russia.

The Main Project of the Biennale consists of two international competitions: a contest for artists – the works by the four winners are displayed on the facades of the Moscow Museum, and a competition for young curators, resulting in the selection of three projects to be featured in the Moscow Museum. The Main Project brought together 47 artists from 10 countries.

The Main Project also presents a new video work by Sasha Pirogova, who received the special Biennale grant. The cinema hall provides the venue for the Extracurricular Practices educational program – a special project of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and the Moscow International Experimental Film  Festival (MIEFF).

The Biennale for Young Art is not simply a project or an exhibition, it is rather a process, a set of various arrangements that create and maintain a living environment for young art. This year, the organizers, facing certain limitations and difficulties, have focused on such formats and solutions for the Biennale objectives as procedure, different ways of representing works, support for interaction between curators and artists, and horizontal relations. It is this approach that allows to maintain continuity in the cultural process, which is essential both for its makers and for the viewer, – Alexey  Novoselov, the Commissioner of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art.

• The structure of the VII Young Biennale includes five programs:

–                        Main Project divided into 2 parts;
–                        9 Special Projects;
–                        Educational Program;
–                        Portfolio Review Program;
–                        Parallel Program consisting of 23 projects.

Main Project
The first part of the Main Project, which started on 5 September, presents the results of the open call for artists who were tasked to create site-specific works for the interior facades of the Museum of Moscow. Out of 370 applications from 64 countries the Biennale’s Board of Experts* has selected four projects that will be commissioned for the event: “Screen Settings” by Alisa Omelianceva (Russia/Austria); “I Look at You, You Look at Me” by Igor Samolet (Russia); “Screen” by Roma Bogdanov (Russia) and “Untitled (All Are Slightly Different)” by Alina Glazoun (Russia).

Sasha Pirogova, who represented the Russian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, has created her first video work in two years, Out of Time, which has received a special mention by the Biennale’s Board of Experts. The work will be produced with the support from the Biennale and unveiled in November.

The Main Project housed in the inner courtyard of the Museum of Moscow will be on view until 6 December 2020.

The second part of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art’s Main Project launches on 3 November 2020 at the Museum of Moscow. It will introduce three curatorial projects in one location.

The international project displays different formats and solutions for exhibiting artworks and organising interaction between curators and artists. As part of its roadmap, the Biennale held a large-scale international open call following which, out of 370 applications from 64 countries, three projects were shortlisted to be produced by the Biennale and exhibited at the Provision Warehouses housing the Museum of Moscow: I don’t know whether the Earth is spinning or not… by Lizaveta Matveeva and Francesca Altamura (Russia and USA),  Personal Places // Archival Spaces by Giulia Morale and Sterre Barentsen (Italy/UK and Germany/Netherlands), forbidden body language by Elza Abdulkhakova (Russia). The projects featuring 47 artists from 10 countries will be on view from 3 November to 6 December in the second building of the Museum of Moscow.

List of curatorial projects and participating artists:

I don’t know whether the Earth is spinning or not… (Lizaveta Matveeva and Francesca Altamura):
Anastasia Korotkova (Russia)
Anna Afonina (Russia)
Dagnini (Russia)
Dan Herschlein (USA)
Evgeny Granilshchikov (Russia)
Fin Simonetti (Canada)
Gaby Sahhar (UK)
Gregory Kalliche (USA)
Hadi Fallahpisheh (Iran/USA)
Joseph Buckley (UK/USA)
Maria Romanova (Russia)
Marina Stakhieva (Russia)
Matt Copson (UK/USA)
Mikołaj Sobczak (Poland/Germany)
Nicholas Grafia (Philippines/Germany)
Nikita Seleznev (Russia)
Pasmur Rachuiko (Russia/Georgia)
Sasha Zubritskaya (Russia)
Shadi Al-Atallah (Saudi Arabia/UAE/UK)
Theresa Chromati (USA)
Valeria Ghrai (Russia)

Personal Places // Archival Spaces (Giulia Morale and Sterre Barentsen):
Anya Gleizer (Russia/UK)
Bo Choy (Hong Kong/UK)
Camille Leveque (France)
Carlos Fernández-Pello (Spain)
Emilija Škarnulytė (Lithuania)
Esper Postma (Germany/Netherlands)
Fields Harrington (USA)
Gabriel Arteaga (Chile)
Giulia Cenci (Italy)
Olga Shurygina (Russia)
Rodrigo Arteaga (Chile)
Teresa Solar (Spain)

forbidden body language (Elza Abdulkhakova):
Abdulkhakova Stroganov Dance Company:
Elza Abdulkhakova (Russia)
German Stroganov (Russia)
Maryam Nagaychuk (Russia)
Eva Valieva (Russia)
Vadim Elichev (Russia)
Aliona Papina (Russia)
Vadim Elichev (Russia)
Nu Simakina (Russia)
The Wish Fulfillment Choir: [2]
Alexey Kirsanov (Russia)
Anastasia Rossokhina (Russia)
Evgenia Fomina (Russia)
Fevralina Pokrovskaya (Russia)
Fyodor Kokorev (Russia)
Nu Simakina (Russia)
Victoria Kudryavtseva (Russia)
Vik Lashchyonov (Russia)

The space for the Main Project designed by CHVOYA architectural bureau (Saint Petersburg).

Special Projects
The Biennale hosts nine special projects created in partnership with major art institutions.

The first special project of the Biennale for Young Art is a collaboration with the blazar Young Art Fair, a satellite of the Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair. Besides, blazar Art Fair has selected one of the artists from the Biennale’s Main Project to participate in the next year’s show out of the competition.

From 14 September to 11 October, the Biennale for Young Art together with Cube.Moscow launched  Support Group, a platform for self-organized initiatives from Moscow that occupy the space of Cube.Moscow for a month. The project is set to become a place for interaction and exchange between many independent participants of the emerging art scene selected by curators Anna Zhurba and Sergey Babkin.

The third special project of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art was launched on 15 September. The online performance titled “Soap Opera” took place in the space of GROUND Solyanka gallery.

In October, the Special Project schedule continues with: “The Map of Human Nature”, an open-call based show in partnership with the ROSIZO State Museum and Exhibition Centre; the scientific research project “Closed fish exhibition”, by Yan Ginzburg and Dmitry Khvorostov and the students of their course Research Based Art at Baza Institute that is devoted to the oeuvre of Elagina and Makarevich, presents a reconstruction of the archive of the original Soviet Fish Exhibition of 1935, together with the Voznesensky Cultural Center; a series of joint projects with the Moscow City Galleries Network across eight venues; and the annual exhibition of young art “Workshop 20’20” devoted to “Homo communicans” theme hosted at the MMOMA Education Center.

The Museum of Moscow also hosts the Special Project by the Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (MIEFF) – the Extracurricular Practices educational programme for filmmakers, as well as weekly screenings and panel discussions as a public film programme Time for collective action.

A joint project in partnership with the Moscow Transport Museum, Museum’s Route Т, is the extension of the first part of the Main Project opened in November. As part of the project, artists Igor Samolet, Alina Glazoun, Alisa Omelianceva, and Roma Bogdanov, who created site-specific works for the internal facades of Museum of Moscow, will take their projects outside to the urban environment and produce artworks for three trolleybus stops and a trolleybus interior on the “Museum’s Route “T” (Komsomolskaya metro station, Krasnoselskaya metro station, Olkhovskaya street). The project will take place in November.

Portfolio Review Program
The program is aimed at identifying young artists from different Russian regions that will be selected following the results of an open call; it will be held in partnership with the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.  The participants will travel to Moscow for a series of Portfolio Review sessions with representatives of the professional art community. The Portfolio Review sessions that take place in November covers the following areas: Art, Media Art, and Art Criticism.

Educational Program
The Educational program consists of three main blocks: a cycle of five international discussions “Salon of the Rejected Categories” (curated by critic and art critic Andrey Shental), “The Biennale Diary” (curated by art critic Boris Klyushnikov) that brings together various communities of theorists and art critics, and a series of master classes from printing workshops (curated by the print-market association Vkus bumagi).

The educational program of the VII Biennale for Young Art uses the online format, interdisciplinarity, horizontal principle of organization that has an aim to popularize contemporary art among a wide audience of viewers, regardless of their geography.

The entire program is implemented in partnership with Winzavod Fund for the Support of Contemporary Art and will be presented on the Biennale website in the Educational Program section: http://youngart.ru/ .

Parallel Program.
Projects of the Parallel Program of the Biennale are carried out at different sites in Moscow, and the age of participants and curators does not exceed 35 years. 36 applications were submitted for the competition: 13 of them were from state organizations and 23-from private institutions. As a result of the open call, the parallel program includes 23 projects initiated by Moscow institutions. These projects are aimed at interacting with young art and touch on current topics in a modern context.

As part of the Parallel Program of the VII Moscow international Biennale of young art, the following projects are held: Against the Grain, Redrum, Matochkin Shar**Strait of Compass, HEADWALK, rftwtkzhbz/registry, PAUSES, The Law of Sound Conservation, Invisible power, OUT OF THE MAP, Approximation of Impossibilities, On the way home, INSIDE OUT, Ambivalence, ART-MEMORY, Parallels, The Island, Joint project with Buro24/7, WATER, Transparency. New dissolution, The «Moscow – Tokyo» Train, open call name_less_1, Light of the Star and Minotaur’s Labyrinth

*The Board of Experts of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art:

• Anna Zhurba;
• Andrey Egorov;
• Alexandra Rudyk;
• Yulia Aksenova;
• Alisa Savitskaya;
• Marina Bobyleva;
• Victoria Mikhelson;
• Iaroslav Volovod;
• Daniel Bulatov;
• Ekaterina Kibovskaya;
• Alexey Novoselov;