Olga Chernysheva's Participation at Manifesta Biennial

In 2016, the Aksenov Family Foundation once again supported the participation of Olga Chernysheva in Manifesta European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which opened in Zurich in June.

The collection of the Foundation includes the artist's graphics (Citizens, Life in Art series) and photographs; Dmitry Aksenov also took part in the implementation of her photographic project Domestication, which became part of the Manifesta in 2014. The episode was filmed at the site of the Novo-Molokovo residential complex under construction, a project by the RDI Group. Throughout the year, habitually turning to private subjects, the artist watched how an artificial landscape was being erected on one of the Moscow outskirts and how it came to life and “domesticated”. Chernysheva's camera captured this "domestication" in the transition from rigid geometric shapes of unfolded reinforcement nets, rows of building cabins, flat laying of rectangular concrete blocks and bricks to organic forms introduced by new residents of the house: a can-aquarium with domestic fish, and floral patterns in the interior.

The Domestication project was exhibited as part of Manifesta-10 by the Hermitage XXI Century Foundation at the First Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. As the curator of the exhibition, art critic Ekaterina Andreeva writes, “in the creative world of Olga Chernysheva, construction is an organic process”, the artist “follows the general rhythm of the breathing of the construction site, when the inorganic immediately becomes covered with organic matter, like moss, and at the same time strives to look more surreal than organic” ... At the same time, notes Andreeva, her view is special and impartial: Chernysheva is not close to the tradition of glorifying the great construction projects of the past, but the metaphor of Ilya Kabakov's "garbage construction site" is also not close.

Manifesta-11 exhibition view with Olga Chernysheva's On Duty photo series, 2016

With the support of the Aksenov Family Foundation Manifesta-11 demontrated works by Olga Chernysheva from the series On Duty (2007), black and white photographs of Moscow metro employees. Enclosed in glass booths, they keep order on escalators and seem to be a strange anachronism in today's reality with more technically advanced, automated and frighteningly ubiquitous surveillance devices.

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