Ruarts Fund presents a big exhibition of contemporary Russian artists. Nina Gomiashvili, the project curator, came up with textile works by 39 authors. All the exhibits were made with methods and techniques that have long been thought of as handicraft and womanish.
“In the first place, the exhibition uses the works from Ruarts Fund’s collection,” Nina Gomiashvili explains. “It took long enough to amass this collection, which includes lots of textile pieces. They don’t share a common topic and are only connected with the method used. I had to start with something to make the narration more accurate. At the very beginning, it was me and my personal emotions that made the cornerstone. I referred to an image from my childhood, from The Wild Swans fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. I found inspiration in the part of the story that described making of the nettle shirts, and this became the central metaphor of the exposition. It brings us back to now, where the sense of instability is so strong, but it also highlights the importance of preserving not only the form, but the human essence.
THREADS exhibition doesn’t aim to make an anthology of Russian textile craft. By means of various and complementary works, it can make contemporary art resound over a thread as a physical and metaphysical connection factor.
At the exhibition, visitors can see the works from Ruarts Fund’s collection plus pieces by emerging artists, who use handicraft methods in their practice. Some of the works were specially made for the exhibition, including the ones by AES+F, Maria Arendt, Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Sabina Baysarova, Ludmila Baronina, Olga Bozhko, Sasha Braulov, Vita Buyvid, Alisa Gorshenina, Varvara Grankova, Ulyana Yelkina, Katya Isayeva, Katika, Rodion Kitayev, Polina Koval, Ludmila Konstantinova, Irina Korina, Andrey Krisanov, Kutya, Anna Lapshinova, Anastasia Litvinova, Artyom Lyapin, Lana Morozova, Timur Novikov, Masha Obukhova, Liza Olshanskaya, Sergey Paradzhanov, Kristina Pashkova, Danila Polyakov, Yeena Samorodova and Sergey Sonin, Polina Serafimova, Vitaly Turlik, Yegor Fedorichev, Olga Florenskaya, Haim Sokol, Dmitry Tsvetkov, Yelena Sharganova, Ustina Yakovleva, and Zoom.
The curator chose Haim Sokol’s Flower for the exhibition, which had been previously displayed in 2021 as part of TRANSFORMATION AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE project in the Lopukhins-Naryshkin mansion.
