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Heirloom / Annulled
Group Exhibition
Projektraum NAUTILUS, Dachauer Str. 110C, 80636 München-Neuhausen-Nymphenburg, Germany
Victoria Kataeva, Hidden 2024, Wood Porcelain, Nickelsilver, Photographer Victoria Kataeva
Event duration: 12-16.03.2025, 10:00-18:00
“Heirloom”
“Приданое” [pridanoje] is a word that can mean both heirloom or dowry, often passed on from mother to child, put together even before the child’s birth. In this project DVIZH collective invited artists with post-Soviet roots to focus on what they, born in the end of or on the ruins of the USSR, came into the world with, and how this heritage shapes their lives today. What uncontrollable things shaped their identity and how those now shape their future; how they connect to their ancestors and (future) descendants. What lies in an old wooden chest they are bound to carry with them in life.
“Heirloom” exhibition will present artworks by 33 artists from Georgia, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Spain, Finland, the USA, Russia, Uzbekistan and others – total of 12 countries.
“Annulled”
“Annulled” is a multidisciplinary exhibition that combines documentary photography, personal stories and conceptual jewellery. DVIZH collected 14 stories of Russian-speaking queer couples: in half of them, the characters who stayed together talk about their relationships and their wedding rings. The other half are couples whose relationships ended for various reasons, including socio-political ones. Their stories are illustrated with wedding rings created by DVIZH artists to show what a happy ending that never happened could have looked like.
The project was created with the support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the framework of the Civil Society Cooperation program. It was first presented at the art festival «Queere Kultur im Exil» by Quarteera e. V. for queer artists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia who have had to flee due to war, repression and persecution.
The two exhibitions are organised by DVIZH collective. Dvizh is an international online collective of Russian-speaking jewellery artists, founded in Georgia in 2024 by Evgenia Elanic, a Russian emigrant jeweller. The other co-curators of the collective are Katia Rabey, Masha Starikova, Agnia Likratowa, Dasha Khoreva and Vera Popova – professional jewellery artists from Georgia, Israel, Serbia and Russia. The word “dvizh” is a slang for something happening, and is a root for many words about movement. It is also a reference to Peredvizhniki, a Russian artist’s’ cooperative from the 1870s, formed in protest to rigid academic arts traditions and travelling from place to place to bring art to the people. DVIZH aims to support and bring together jewellery artists who speak one language and thus share pieces of the same cultural context. Recent events, like political repressions in Belarus and Russia, and the Russian invasion in Ukraine, led to many people being separated from their home and former communities, finding themselves in other countries and cultures. DVIZH collective wishes to fight this separation and form a new community, that would unite artists across the borders, and help keep sharing their art with the world.