The Withdrawal of the Red Army / Den røde armés tilbaketrekning / Возвращение Красной Армии
Time, memory, resistance and play form the conceptual anchors for the exhibition itself. Works are contextualized to evoke a spatial poetics premised upon intersecting historical eras, geographical borders, psychological lacunae, and both living and dead ideologies.
Thematically, the exhibition revolves around notions of history writing and constructions of reality through language, the negotiation of collective trauma through games and play, camouflage, appropriation, repetition, as well as questions of originality and authenticity in the work of art.
The exhibition is curated by Ivan Galuzin together with Lise Dahl who is the traveling exhibition program curator of Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø – where the first part was shown from November 7th 2015 to 25 of January, 2016
This traveling exhibition is going to move between the two neighbouring countries, Norway and Russia, loosely retracing the movement of the Red Army troops who liberated Northern Norway from the German Army in October 1944. In Kirkenes, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Blaker the exhibition will take new forms, adapting to the local context. Every space, with it’s surroundings, presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities and in every space we are looking for the binding medium that makes the path between our realities visible. This exhibition is not about showing a certain set of objects in a defined location. The materiality of the objects is secondary to what this project triggers in our collective memory, what human abilities and potential it enables in every one of the five particular locations.
Kirkenes, as a place, constitutes the middle point of the balance beam between the two countries, marking the presence of the Soviet troops in the town during 1944-1945.
The exhibition artists are;
JG Ballard
Yakov Chernikhov
Ivan Galuzin & Oleg Samoilov
Asta Gröting
Lee Miller & David E. Scherman
Yoko Ono
Gustav Metzger
Amilcar Packer
Leonard Rickhard
Sean Snyder
This touring exhibition is made possible with contributions from:
in collaboration with:
Arkhangelsk Exhibition Hall of Artist Union
Blaker Gml. Meieri
carlier | gebauer
Iakov Chernikhov International Foundation, ICIF
Lee Miller Archives
Lisson Gallery
Murmansk Childrens Art School
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
Nordland County Council
Orkana Publishing House
Pikene på Broen
Troms County Council
UiT, The Arctic University of Norway
Military historical re-enactement society Zapolyarny rubezh