#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Norilsk Museum presents the PolArt polar art residence project – the final exhibition of artists Lukiya Murina and Nikolay Isayev from Tomsk – Norilsk: Archive of Overcoming – a project about three Norillag prisoners’ fate.
Norilsk is a unique place where we need to talk about difficult heritage, the artists believe. Here it is literally underfoot: the city was built by prisoners, the former camps infrastructure remains are in the city’s outskirts.
“We wanted to focus primarily on people and, when talking about their lives, pay attention to the period of their stay in Norilsk as prisoners – these years changed their fates forever”, Lukiya and Nikolay explained the exhibition concept.
The exhibits will be complex assemblages that tell the life story of the artist Evfrosinia Kersnovskaya, the writer and engineer Sergey Shcheglov and the geologist Nikolay Urvantsev. The assemblages are combined paintings, graphic sheets and engravings, different types of printing created on the basis of archival documents and photographs, artifacts found in the places of former Norillag departments.
“We chose heroes close to us and connected by life and fate with Tomsk. Kersnovskaya served her first exile, from which she escaped, on the territory of today’s Tomsk region, Nikolay Urvantsev studied at the Tomsk Technological Institute. Heroes inclined to document events through scientific works, literary and artistic works, to self-archiving and archiving other people’s lives”, the authors said.
The Norilsk: Archive of Overcoming exhibition opening will take place in the museum on Leninsky prospect, 14, tomorrow, August 3.
Earlier we told you why Talnah residents collect stones.
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Text: Anzhelika Stepanova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka
