Several exhibitions did not take place in Moscow due to new rules for selecting artists

On July 20, the regulation of the Ministry of Culture came into force, which requires federal museums to check upcoming exhibitions for compliance with the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation. By mid-August, the prescription went down to the local level. True, for some reason, not in writing, but in oral form.

Recently, a meeting of the Directorate of the Association of Exhibition Halls of Moscow was held, where the directors and curators of galleries (the OVZ includes 20 sites) announced the new rules for selecting artists. Now exhibition participants are required to provide information about themselves, in which, in addition to the standard short biography, it is necessary to indicate foreign business trips for the last three years. In addition, curators should check the social networks of the authors for “doubtful” posts.

As a result of the newly introduced “filter”, two exhibitions were no longer held in the OVZ (moreover, they were canceled even before the general meeting), and the head of the Na Kashirka gallery, Lyudmila Kuzmina, decided to resign. What is the “policy of loyalty” in culture, understood “MK”.

In the conditions of the new reality, many uncomfortable topics and works of art are going under the knife, in which someone may see some wrong subtext, even if there is none. There are already enough precedents when the old works of artists did not fit into the current situation. Suffice it to recall the scandalous cancellation of the Grisha Bruskin exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery, which was made up of works created from the mid-1980s to 2020. Or the criminal case against Oleg Kulik regarding the installation “Big Mother” (created in 2018), which, according to the author, is dedicated to the relationship between a man and a woman, and is not at all a mockery of Vuchetich’s sculpture “Motherland”. These situations have received significant publicity. HIA cancellations are quiet: they are already being talked about in whispers or written between the lines.

The story of the Sign-Message exhibition, which will not open at the Na Kashirka Gallery on August 18, as planned, is indicative. The project, curated by Kira Mathyssen, was to be a study on the sign as “the external visual image of society”. Kira invited the artists to create their own message sign in any genre, be it an object, graphics, painting, video, sculpture or collage. “Both experiments with language and the formal aspect are of interest: the letter as a constructive element, the word as a construction,” reads the description of the project. Works by contemporary artists were planned to be presented along with historical posters and photographs of signs from the 19th and 20th centuries. The project was being prepared for a long time, but a few days before the installation, something went wrong …

“First, the curator of the exhibition, Kira Mathyssen, said that our work “Prive” did not pass,” says artist Maria Kalmykova, who works both as an independent author and as a member of the M + M group, that is, in collaboration with her husband, artist Maxim Protsenko . – This is an installation in the form of a gold bar surrounded by a fence, that is, it is a private territory of a conditional gold reserve, it does not matter if it is private or public.

The second work, entitled “Meeting”, was allowed: it was shown many times and consists of two figures, red and black, holding each other. Then Kira began to find out from the artists, they signed letters (against the special operation – “MK”). It turned out that the HVZ could not sign an agreement with us to participate in the exhibition. Thus, the work of most artists was removed …

On Kashirka, they suffered for a long time, trying to present the project, perhaps under a different name. However, it ended up that the curator of the exhibition, Kira Mathyssen, resigned, the head of the exhibition hall, Lyudmila Kuzmina, decided not to open the project in a truncated form and now intends to resign. On retire.

Another planned project did not take place at another site of the HVZ – in the gallery “On Peschanaya”. The exhibition with the symbolic name “Love and Tears” of students and teachers of the “Comics” program of the HSE School of Design was supposed to open at the end of July.

“The exhibition is dedicated to the changes that are taking place today with the most important concepts that accompany us all our lives. In particular, the authors turn to romantic discourse and propose to deconstruct its obsolete elements,” the project description reads. However, even there something went wrong with the participants and works, which, apparently, did not fit into the new rules.

However, according to the official version, the exhibition, and with it the entire gallery, was closed “for technical reasons.” In a word, the frost is getting stronger despite the August heat. The alignment in culture is now as follows: if an artist wrote the conditional “Eh” on the social network at the end of February on emotions, and then closed his account, now he automatically falls into the “stop list”.

The authors, whose works came at the wrong time and did not pass the “filter”, however, do not despair. “We won’t be able to exhibit – it’s okay: we will work at the table or arrange exhibitions in our garden, organize apartment houses.” What else is left for them? Another thing is the organizers of exhibitions, who, having decided to stay in their places in state institutions, are forced to play by new, but still proven rules. After all, a work of art is always ambiguous and figurative, and if you wish, you can see something wrong in anyone. And they have not yet learned to understand this and that, therefore, obviously, this is not the last cancellation …