It is the seventh year of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) program of residencies for young Russian curators. This year, seven young Russian curators attended residencies in centres of contemporary art in different European countries in order to write their own project. During the final event at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, a jury will select one project and award a grant that must be used to realise the project.
The program’s goal is to provide curators with an opportunity to work in a foreign contemporary art structure providing inspiration to elaborate on a concept for an art project. The topic of the project is decided each year. The jury will select the winner based on presentations of the projects. The best project will then be realized in one of the cultural institutions in Russia. This year’s residencies ran in Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, Lenbahhaus in Munich, Rupert art center in Vilnius, Witte de With in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Design Museum in Helsinki, Le Chateau d’Oiron, France, and Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm.
After an open call in April, the institutes chose Alexandra Anikina, Yana Gaponenko, Julia Grachikova, Ksenia Kaverina, Tatiana Kudryavtseva, Marina Pugina, and Maria Sarycheva to participate in the residencies. The projects prepared by the participants were framed by the topic of “Art activating its environment”. The topic had its own purpose: one of the goals of the program is to try to investigate internal bonds of art processes and to present it to a wide audience. Art often interacts with the environment in a broader sense including local spaces and global processes. That gives a lot of space for a curatorial research.
There will be an artist talk before the presentation with Rupert art center director Juste Jonutyte and the director of finance and organisation at Arts Electronia, Veronika Leibl. Afterwards, the participants will present their projects, with the author of the winning project, selected by the jury, being awarded a grant of 4000 euro for its realization. There will also be a chance for the audience to vote for the winner of the Audience Award of 1000 euro.
The 2018 jury members are: Garage Museum of Contemporary Art curator Valentin Diaconov; Moscow Museum of Modern Art curator Anna Zhurba; Moscow Museum of Modern Art researcher and Cosmoscow Foundation for Contemporary Art curator Alexey Maslyaev; Solyanka VPA exhibition space curator Margarita Osepyan; and curator of V-A-C Foundation’s V-A-C LIFE program Andrey Parshikov.
