Project curated by Viktor Misiano

Prato, 27 May – 26 August 2007
Open: 26 May, 6 pm

15 years have gone by since the disappearance of the enormous geo-political space, previously called the USSR. But, what is happening in the various countries that were to be found on its territory? Moreover, what’s happening now, in the middle of the first decade of the new 21st century? What does define the art scene of these countries today? In the middle of the new decade? After fifteen years of the so called “independence”? What are young artists, who developed after the end of real socialism, doing? And how are those artists, well known during the previous decade, working? How do they experience the perhaps hastily proclaimed, “end of transmission period”, the “stabilization” and the “normalization”?
This exhibition comes at the right moment because as more time separates us from the fall of the Berlin wall, wider is the distance that separates us from the previous age, and more vital becomes the task of understanding that past. This is something we can see not only in the works of the Russian artists but also in the artworks of the Baltic countries who, in their official politics try to forget about the historic past. And this is obvious in spite of the difference of the cultural worlds of these countries and in spite of the difference in their actual geo-political situation, the reference points in their post-Soviet development were the same and it is beyond controversy that their experience of modernity is the Soviet period.
This is an exhibition about a part of the global world, about a multi-dimensional world that wants to be or tries to look one-dimensional, about every part of this world that has its own past, without which it is impossible to understand the present. This is not an exhibition about the past but about the present and its natural interaction with the past.
This exhibition will show the reflection of the artists about the experience of their insertion in the global world, about the trauma of this experience, about losses and gains, about the experience of freedom and about the acknowledgment of its conditional character, about the opening of the Western world that, having stopped to be a myth, turned out to be a disappointment. This is an exhibition about searching one’s place in a world that proved to be not only big but enormously multi-layered and a labyrinth. As a consequence this exhibition is not about nostalgia, that is seen as a conservative experience, passionate or even reactionary, but it is a reflection on the new modernity, on self-definition today, in front of new problems. This is an exhibition about progressive nostalgia.
The show will present artists not only from Russia, but also from Armenia, Azerbaidzhan, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Estonia. The artists are of the young generation and of the old one: the main criterion for their presence – is the present-day relevance of the author’s position, and his sensibility towards the central problem of the exhibition – “progressive nostalgia”.
The exhibition is accompanied by an exhaustive catalogue edited by Marco Bazzini and Viktor Misiano with essays by important authors from different countries, giving local perception on the experience of “progressive nostalgia”.

Works by: Vaharam Aghasyan, Vladimir Arkhipov, AZAT (Azat Sargsyan), Babi Badalov, Pavel Braila, Sergey Bratkov, Ilya Budraitskis, Alexei Buldakov, Petr Bystrov, Olga Chernysheva, Ilya Chichkan, Ulan Djaparov, Factory of Found Clothes (FFC), Natalja Pershina-Yakimanskaya (Gluklya), Olga Egorova (Tsaplya), Yevgeniy Fiks, Alexandra Galkina, Dimitri Gutov, Maxim Karakulov, Gulnara Kasmalieva, Olga Kisseleva, Aleksander Komarov, Irina Korina, Vladimir Kupryanov, Erbossyn Meldibekov, Nokolay Oleynikov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Kerim Ragimov, Koka Ramishvili, Egle Rakauskaite, Mark Raidpere, The ‘R.E.P.’ Group, Laura Stasiulyte, Konstantin Sulaberidze, Sophia Tabatadze, David Ter-Oganjan, Leonid Tishkov, Jaan Toomik, Nadia Tsulukidze, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Dmitry Vilensky, Yelena Vorobyeva, What is to be done? (A platform for engaged culture).

Exhibition promoted by:
Regione Toscana
TRA ART rete regionale per l'arte contemporanea
Comune di Prato

With the support of:
Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena

and the partecipation of :
ASM SpA, Gruppo Consiag, CariPrato SpA e Unione Industriale Pratese

Openings:
open daily, 11.00-19.00, closed Tuesday
Admission:
full 5 euros, reduced 4 euros.