This entire world

The exhibition «This Entire World» hosted by The Polar Art Residence is the result of a nomadic or wandering residence. Evgenyi Gavrilov and Ulyana Podkorytova participates in the project.

«This Entire World» is an exhibition of contemporary art based on the results of the nomadic residence. It sums up the results of a six-month artistic research. In the autumn of 2023, curator Zhenya Chaika and 12 artists went on an expedition to Yamal. They became nomads for 12 days and visited Noyabrsk, Muravlenko, Gubkinsky, Tarko-Sale, Novy Urengoy, Labytnangi and Salekhard. The artists also studied the Nenets language, got acquainted with the folklore of the indigenous peoples of the north, met with scientists and researchers. "This entire world" is created from everything that the artists saw, learned and felt during the expedition. All the works were created for the exhibition and have not been exhibited anywhere before.

Curator Zhenya Chaika about the project:

«I’m developing the idea of constructivist nominalism, that means whenever we understand something, we actually create a new world. So, we can say that when we understand something, the result of our understanding is an idea of the world. Or we can say that what we have understood is our symbolic world. That's why the project is called "This entire World", in other words, that's all we got acquainted. Our expedition or a magical nomadic residence took place in September 2023, when the artists and I visited 7 cities of the Yamal district. But it was also clear that it was simply impossible to start with an expedition right away, because you can't come to an unfamiliar territory and start doing something. I wanted to create a territory of common knowledge, which became the Nenets language. We started studying it in August together with our teacher Necha.»

Evgeny Gavrilov in his video installation «The Lower World» recreated the world inhabited by the Sihircha - a mythical Yamal people. The Sihircha were forced to go underground, where the mammoths have been grazed, after «real people» the Nenets were coming to Yamal. During the expedition, Evgeny scanned exhibits of museums, monuments and landscape elements. The outlines of the world we know are guessed in his Lower world, but perhaps it only seems so. The word «sircha» is connected with the meaning of «making a hole» or «avoiding». When the Nenets came, they hid themselves. As if in every place where new people come, there is always someone who has lived before, but has gone to his «lower world». A place where you can continue to graze underground reindeer when it’s no longer safe on the ground.

Ulyana Podkorytova during art residence created the work «567 types of snow». It looks like a kitschy karaoke booth. There’s fake karaoke inside. Using the help of a simple melody and animated text, the artist tells documentary stories from the childhood of two indigenous inhabitants of Yamal. Nenets singer and folklorist Tatyana Lar and founder of ethnotourism in Yamal Herman Sandrin shared stories about their childhood and studies at boarding school. For example, Herman said that many representatives of indigenous peoples draw well, and they are especially good at landscapes: missing their native places, children in boarding schools constantly draw tundra, deer and plague. Ulyana composed the lyrics of the songs of little Nenents children in Russian. Then they were translated into Nenets and Khanty and presented in a dummy booth. The animated text is accompanied by video landscapes of the winter tundra and a mythical six-legged moose shimmering with digital gold, which seems to hover over the destinies of people.

Photo: Vladimir Marin