The family tree of Russian contemporary art. Lecture 4. Sasha Obukhova on Andrei Monastyrski

DESCRIPTION

Andrey Monastyrsky is a living legend and an uncontested guru for many generations of artists. A radical theorist and a pioneer actionist, he was among the people who changed the face of Moscow contemporary art in the mid 1970s, combining poetry and visuals, ordinary actions and contemporary philosophy in their work. His actions, videos, collages, and installations of the1970s-2010s are building on the traditions of Russian avant-garde and Western contemporary art, while also testing the limits of what we know as “contemporary”. A recluse in the 2010s, hardly ever going public, Monastyrsky still exerts a major influence on contemporary art, just by his defiant presence in today's culture.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Sasha Obukhova is an art historian and Head of the Research Department of the Garage Museum. She graduated from Moscow State University in 1992. In 1993 she studied at the Central European University (Prague). She has worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the National Centre for Contemporary Art. In 2000 she was involved in a working group which curated a permanent exhibition for the Tretyakov Gallery: The Art of the Second Half of the XX Century. In 2004 she became a founding member and director of the Art Projects Fund where she established ACRA (the Archive of Contemporary Russian Art). She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Kandinsky Prize.