Exhibition "Ay"

On June 5, the Street Art Museum will open an updated public exhibition for the first time since 2019. By tradition, the entire site will be updated: old murals and murals will be painted over to make way for new ones, the space of the boiler room will be occupied by sculptures and installations. The theme of the seasonal exhibition will be the loss of landmarks and the search for oneself, and artists from Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Minsk will take part in the creation of the exhibition.

The Street Art Museum will present a large-scale project of young Russian artists - the site-specific exhibition "Ay", curated by Maya Kowalski. The curator's task was to show the peculiarity of the Nizhny Novgorod street art scene in the context of the works of artists from all over Russia.

The exhibition "Au" is a collective reflection at the same time about the lost ("ay" as a cry for help) and the newly found (AU as an alternate universe). The curator, together with the artists, literally grew a forest of street art on the territory of the museum, which is the very alternative universe, that is, a new way to think about a place.

The new exhibition differs significantly from all previous expositions of the Street Art Museum: a large number of site-specific works and installations will be added to the usual large-scale murals and murals. For example, the Bomse team will turn a factory chimney into a cigarette as an ecology manifesto, and the St. Petersburg artist Polina Osipova will create a new generation of forest mushrooms in her author's style for the exhibition.

The concept of the forest did not appear by chance, we come across its image in early childhood, and the forest thicket is one of the main characters of the Russian folk tale. We also meet the forest in Norstein's animation "Hedgehog in the Fog", which repeats Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy". Thus, the format of the exhibition smoothly transitions into a forest space in the middle of an urban and industrial environment, where magical inhabitants live.

The past year, under the sign of the COVID-19 pandemic, has changed a lot: society is in an alternative universe, to which everyone adapts as best he can. In a stream of constant change and instability, it is difficult to maintain a basic sense of security and clarity - rather, the whole world is now in a state of seeking peace, whether it be home comfort, tranquility through nature, or an appeal to the eternal. A man lost in the forest shouts "Ay" - asks for help and thus tries to keep in touch with the familiar world. Similarly, a modern man, who is in a dark forest with mysterious and unknown creatures, feels unarmed in front of an unpredictable future and tries to regain his confidence.

The exhibition features works by artists, including Nikita Nomerz, Pavel Otdelnov, Ilya Mozgi, Maxim Trulov, Ksyusha Lastochka, Ivan Seryi, Dmitry Kashtalyan, Polina Osipova, BOMSE, Misha Vert, Ivan Volkov, Pasha Paper, Viktor Zabuga, Turben, TO " Zatreshina ”(Vadim Sobolev, Pavel Ermolaev), Daria Pravda, Dima Retro, KMF, Tigran Kostan, Kuril Chto, 100%, PSOF.