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Crazy Moscow
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Photographs by Natalia Nikitin
With the support of TRILISTNIK
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ImmaterialBox
May 19 — June 2, 2005
Being originally a genuine Muscovite I became a foreigner since the beginning of
the 80s. Accordingly, my eye registers in contemporary Moscow everything that
looks for me exotic: city’s views that neither remind me of Moscow as it was as
I was living there nor seem to be similar to the Western cities. I don’t try to
attain objectivity or to be systematic. I am not especially fascinated and I do
not judge — I simply look at what I see and react to it. Actually, this
experience of looking at the city of my childhood from a distant, alienated
perspective is not new for me. Changes of places and shifts in perception began
even before the emigration.
I was born and grown in the centre of Moscow, on the Gazetnyi pereulok that my
grandmother couldn’t learn to call ulitsa Ogareva. Moscow has formed my
mentality, my sensibility, my attitude toward life, art and people. In Moscow I
loved everything — its chaos and its asceticism, its eclecticism and its claim
to manifest the “grand style”, its grandeur, its being a capital, and at the
same time its coziness, even provinciality — a lot of places in Moscow seemed to
be never affected by movement of time, by civilization.
After a while a catastrophe happened. We were forced out
of the city centre. And I found myself in a different city, in a different world.
To emigrate to the West was easier for me than to leave the centre of Moscow.
After many years that I have spent in different cities and countries I began to
visit Moscow again — but it became already a very different Moscow. That is how
it works: I come, see and make photographs. And I show to the spectator what
came out of it.
Natalia Nikitin
In connection with this exhibition, I would like to thank first my
husband Boris Groys for his unfailing support, and all my friends
artists who have been inspiring me for many years, who have taught
me a lot and who have helped me by means of their advice and
constructive criticism. These are Ilya Kabakov, D. A. Prigov, Boris
Mikhailov, Vadim Zakharov, Yuri Albert, Yuri Leiderman, Olga
Chernyshova and many others. I am grateful to Olga Sviblova who
first exhibited my photos in Moscow, to Vasiliy and Irina Bychkov
who showed my photo- and video-project “Nomads of art” at NON/FICTION-5,
to Vitaliy Patsukov and Leonid Bazhanov who organized my exhibition
“Employees of art” at SCMA. I would like to thank Natalia Semenova
for her various help of many years; she has published a catalogue
for this exhibition at the TRILISTNIK publishing house the staff of
which also has my gratitude.
Natalia Nikitin
press dossier
Russian version
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