Tsikory Center for Contemporary Art reopens in Zheleznogorsk

On April 30, Tsikory Center for Contemporary Art in Zheleznogorsk will reopen after reconstruction with a space that includes a library and café and will offer exhibitions, film screenings, and education events. The first contemporary art center in Zheleznogorsk was reconstructed with the support of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Alisher Usmanov’s Art, Science and Sport Charity Foundation.

Since 2016, Tsikory Art Group (Aleksandra Dorofeeva, Eduard Dushny, Nikolay Salkov and others) have been organizing exhibitions and education events to develop the city and its art scene. In the same year they found a permanent home in a former bakery building, which became the venue for the Zheleznogorsk Biennale of Contemporary Art (2018, 2020), the Son Rudokopa Independent Film Festival (2019), and V Pole Curating Laboratory (2019).

The reconstruction project was designed by Maria Serova, a Moscow-based architect who has previously collaborated with FORM and Buromoscow. She is also a researcher and writer on Soviet modernist architecture and co-founder of the research media project Sovmod.

The renovated space will open with the exhibition project Interagent Romance, which explores the phenomena of love and relationships. Artists were invited to produce works reflecting on our ability to form attachments, not only to other humans but also to structures, cities, and institutions. Participants include: Vyacheslav Agalakov (Zheleznogorsk), Ivan Chirikov (Moscow), Nikolay Chudotvorets (Zheleznogorsk), Denis Galkin (Rylsk, Kursk Oblast), Eduard Dushny (Zheleznogorsk), Nikita Klen (Stary Oskol), Filipp Krikunov (Novosibirsk), Ekaterina Mikhatova (St. Petersburg), Roma Moiseenko (Shigry, Kursk Oblast), Yury Mukhin (Orel), RISE485 (Zheleznogorsk), Yulia Shaforostova (Krasnodar), Sasha Smeshinka (Zheleznogorsk), Nadya Striga (Berezovsky, Sverdlovsk Oblast), Igor Vladimirsky (Kursk), Semyon Voronov (Moscow), and Asya Voronova (Moscow).

Tsikory was Institution of the Year 2020 at Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair. Forthcoming projects include Garage Screen Film Festival, a cycle of lectures by directors of cultural institutions as part of the public program for Interagent Romance, a curating school, a post-dance workshop, and courses in design, photography, and folk art.