Curated by: Anastasia Skvortsova, Anastasia Shavlokhova
Architecture by: FORM

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art with the general support of «NOVATEK» company presents an exhibition of the «Nepokorennye» studio entitled «Nepokorennye Prospect» which is held in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the studio. The exhibition title takes the name of the street in St. Petersburg on which the studio is located. The twenty participants presented in the show express themselves using a variety of art forms, from easel and monumental painting to performance and installation. Their work appears individually or within an area designated for each artist in the exhibition space.

Set up by the alumni of the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design in 2007, the open studio «Nepokorennye» continues the tradition of forming artistic enclaves as an alternative to academic institutions. Lying at the core of the studio is the idea of creating both a creative environment to unite young artists of post-Soviet Russia and a new context in which art can grow within St. Petersburg’s artistic scene. The studio’s residents do not form a new artistic movement, nor do they associate themselves with an existing one. Instead, they are clearly asserting themselves as a phenomenon of space.

The idea of a uniting space served as an impulse for both the concept and design of the show. As the curator Anastasia Shavlokhova puts it, the exhibition is partly inspired by Timothy Morton’s phrase «contact becomes content». It is the continuing communication between participants as they work in a communal space that makes mutual influence on both form and content inevitable. The exhibition aims to reveal this complex structure of internal relations.

Alongside the collective endeavor to develop the studio as an artistic enclave, common to all participants, each artist continues to pursue a more personal goal, that of the search of formal means that could marry traditional schools and practices with contemporary art. Therefore, the «Nepokorennye Prospect» exhibition will demonstrate the results of attempts to address the issues of contemporary art with instruments acquired in academia. For example, Alena Tereshko’s interpretation of Boris Kustodiev’s work raises the issues of both objectification of woman and her place in art history and the system of art education.

The anniversary exhibition shows the studio recognizing itself both as a phenomenon on its own and reflecting on its place in the history of art alliances. While the participants spent the first five years investing their efforts in the communal project of the studio, the following five years saw each of them focused on his or her own path. Having returned to these former stages in order to present this show, the artists now have no choice but to move on, as it is only by moving forward that one can change one’s thinking framework.

The «Nepokorennye» studio exhibition is a continuation of MMOMA’s research program dedicated to the St. Petersburg’s school as part of which the museum has already held retrospective exhibitions of Timur Novikov, Vladislav Mamishev-Monroe as well as group shows presenting the work of the necrorealists, The New Artists, and The New Blockheads.

The «Nepokorennye» studio exhibition is held as part of the Parallel Program of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art.
The design is realized with the support of Tikkurila.

Curators:

Anastasia Skvortsova (b. 1988) is a curator and exhibition coordinator. Skvortsova graduated from the Department of Theory and History of Art of the I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting Sculpture and Architecture (2010) and received her Master’s degree in Art Criticism and Curatorial Studies from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of Saint Petersburg State University (2014). She also completed the Loft Project ETAGI Curator School (Saint-Petersburg, 2010) and V-A-C Moscow Curatorial Summer School (2013) as well as internships at Calvert 22 Gallery (London) and Manifesta 10 (St Petersburg). Skvortsova curated the Nepokorennie gallery (2011-2016) and worked as a coordinator at the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015). She has collaborated with WINZAVOD Contemporary Art Center, CEC Arts Link, the Loft Project ETAGI exhibition space, Anna Nova and RuArts galleries. Skvortsova is a laureate of the EUNIC contest for young curators (2013).

Anastasia Shavlokhova (b. 1984) is a curator, the founder of Nepokorennye Open Studio, the curator of special programs at WINZAVOD Contemporary Art Center, the founder and curator of the Philosophical Club at WINZAVOD. Shavlokhova graduated from the Department of History of Art and Cultural Studies of the St. Petersburg Stieglitz Academy of Art and Design (2007). She co-curated «VideoCapture» festival (2008 — 2009, together with Viktoria Ilushkina) and was a guest curator of START Project for Support to Young Russian Artists at WINZAVOD (2008–2009). Anastasia is a laureate of the Innovation Prize in a Curatorial Project nomination (2009), the Sergey Kurekhin Prize (2009) and the Caryatid Prize in a Young Curator nomination (2011). She also won the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s German Chancellor Fellowship (2012-2013).

Participants:

Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Stas Bags, Ilya Gaponov, Andrey Gorbunov, Ilya Grishaev, Irina Drozd, Viktoria Ilushkina, Anton Konukhov, Kirill Koteshov, Kirill Makarov, Asya Marakulina, Semen Motolyanets, Konstantin Novikov, Ivan Plusch, Tatyana Podmarkova, Veronika Rudyeva-Ryazantseva, Maxim Svischev, Alena Tereshko, Alan Khatagty.

NOVATEK is one of the largest independent natural gas producers in Russia. The Company is engaged in the exploration, production, processing and marketing of natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons and has 20 years of operational experience in the Russian oil and natural gas sector.

Social policy and charity make up an important part of NOVATEK’s activities. In 2016, the Company continued contributing to projects aimed at supporting culture, preserving and revitalizing the national cultural identity and spiritual legacy of Russia, promoting and integrating Russian art into the international cultural scene.

GENERAL PARTNER OF THE PROJECT

The design is realized with the support of