Distortions and Other Post-Soviet Memories of Moscow Conceptualism

• In Event: Memory in Creation: The Artistic Legacy of the Soviet Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

The 2023 exhibit “Distortions: Moscow Conceptualists Working Today” was the culmination of a multigenerational, transnational investigation of the oppositional art movement Moscow Conceptualism, which first arose in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The collaboratively organized show brought artists from the late-Soviet “underground” in creative conversation with a small army of younger, North American artists and art historians to reevaluate the movement as a whole and reinterpret its postmodern discoveries about cooperative and discursive art practices in the twenty-first century. This paper examines the creative “distortions” of that show as well as similar art projects in the region for what they can tell us about the power of cooperative memory-making, unofficial professional dialogue, and ludic artistic expression today.

Author

• Mary A. Nicholas, Lehigh U