Nomadic camp of artists with white ribbons

Artists rolled their works along the boulevards of Moscow on handcarts. The traveling exhibition “The Nomadic Museum of Contemporary Art”, as part of the worldwide “Night at the Museum” event, was agreed in advance with the authorities. The organizers of the action said that the walk would not have political overtones, but along the way the caravan of artists was joined by Strategy-31 activists, people with white ribbons and other symbols of protest. PublicPost walked along the boulevards of Moscow and talked to the artists.


25 authors were officially invited to participate in the “Nomadic Museum of Contemporary Art” event (Sergey Yakunin, Leonid Sokhransky, Galina Shilina, Elena Munts, Andrey Mitenev, Marina Zvyagintseva, Sergey Katran, Olga and Oleg Tatarintsev, Mikhail Pogarsky, Valery Korchagin and others) , but as the march progressed, other independent artists joined them. The initiative to take works of art into the street was automatically equated to the “Walk with Writers,” which a week earlier was held by famous Moscow writers. The idea of ​​a nomadic museum was born six months ago and has nothing to do with the writers’ event. “We are not having a political action,” said Yuri Samodurov, one of the curators of the exhibition. “The purpose of our walk is to take art objects out of the closed space of the museum and make them part of the urban environment. This is a purely artistic action.”

The caravan of artists started in Milyutinsky Lane. To the sound of tom-toms, the crowd marched along Sretensky, Rozhdestvensky and Petrovsky Boulevards, where the procession encountered an obstacle. The entrance to Trubnaya Square was blocked by a fence, which the artists had to break down themselves.

The action ended near the Museum of Modern Art on Petrovka. The event took place under the watchful gaze of police officers, and paddy wagons were seen on the streets along which the artists passed. The column of protesters stretched for more than a kilometer. Not everyone was able to get to the Museum of Modern Art - some especially large objects simply did not fit on the narrow streets. Their authors had to leave the race ahead of time.

White ribbon workers joined the “non-political” walk of artists - some carried protest posters, handed out leaflets, someone brought a portrait of Putin and tried to sell it to the protesters. However, among the artists themselves there were also opposition-minded people. Many of them admitted that there was a political subtext in their works, which was not noticeable at first glance. On the way to Trubnaya Square, the caravan was joined by artist Igor Cherchenko, National Bolshevik and organizer of Strategy-31 in Israel. Activists of " Strategy " distributed leaflets and invited everyone to Triumphal Square on May 31. One of them, Yevgeny Popov, was detained by the police. There were also provocations from Orthodox activists - one of them tore up a work depicting participants in a scandalous prayer service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Among the artists' works, the most notable ones were a white tank, a cage with red balls, a hospital bed with barbed wire instead of a mattress, strewn with rose petals, and a small riot police car on a string.

PublicPost asked the artists to explain the meaning of their work.