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Elena Yaichnikova
curating, writing, researching
in contemporary art and
transcultural studies
25 June – 23 August 2026
GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Artem Timonov
Artists: Rabindranath Tagore, Abhishek Chakraborty, Ruma Choudhury, Samit Das, GABAA. Sanchayan Ghosh, Sangita Maity, Liza Neklessa, Ivan Novikov, The Otolith Group, Ulyana Podkorytova, Raqs Media Collective, Prasanta Sahu
The legacy of the great twentieth-century Indian poet, artist, and thinker in dialogue with works by contemporary artists.
The exhibition offers a new perspective on the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), an outstanding figure in world culture and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The project is centred on Tagore’s ideas about holistic education and collective creativity, openness to the traditions of East and West alike, and the unity of nature and man, craft and art. These ideas were most fully realised at Visva-Bharati University, which Tagore founded in 1921 in West Bengal as an alternative to British colonial schools. Many prominent Indian artists and visionaries who would shape the country’s future worked here at Tagore’s invitation. The University’s teaching model and the layout of its campus, devised by the founder himself, largely determined the concept and architecture of the exhibition at GES-2. The title “The World in a Single Nest” refers to the informal motto of Visva-Bharati, borrowed from ancient Vedic texts.
The exhibition features paintings by Rabindranath Tagore himself, archival materials dedicated to an exhibition of his work in Moscow in 1930, when Tagore visited the Soviet capital in person, as well as works by contemporary Indian and Russian artists, including recent graduates of Visva-Bharati University, who re-examine Tagore’s legacy and show the relevance of his ideas today.
All photos: Daniel Annenkov/ GES-2
21 May – 20 September 2026
GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova, Mark Akopian, Trung Mai, Artem Timonov
Artists: Alexey Bogolepov, Hà Nguyên Long, Nguyễn Thế Sơn, Nguyễn Vũ Hải, Phạm Ngọc Lân, Sanya Sazhenskaya, Kamil Sazhensky, Anastasia Tsayder
An exhibition-study that approaches standardised housing in Moscow and Hanoi through the concept of "adhocism"—the improvised ways in which ordinary people transform the reality that surrounds them.
The new residential complexes that appeared in Hanoi in the second half of the twentieth century were largely inspired by the Soviet experience with large-panel construction and urban planning. The exhibition Moscow—Hanoi. Landscapes of Optimism, created in collaboration with the Vietnamese architect and curator Trung Mai, uses examples of mass housing in the capitals of Vietnam and the USSR to show how modernist architecture acquires individual traits and adapts to climate, culture, and people’s habits, forming the way of life of a whole generation.
The exhibition’s architecture is a three-part labyrinth. The first section details Moscow’s standardised mikrorayons (micro-districts built in 1950s—1970s) and housing models developed for other nations, including Uzbekistan, Ghana, and Vietnam. The second part centres on the Vietnamese collective housing, the Khu Tập Thể (KTT), featuring archival and research materials. Linking these two chapters is a section dedicated to the life of the Vietnamese diaspora in Moscow and the story of Salon Natasha—the first independent centre for contemporary art in Vietnam, founded by the Vietnamese artist Vũ Dân Tân and his wife, Soviet philologist Natalia Kraevskaia. Tracing parallels between the USSR and Vietnam, the project brings together archival materials, works by contemporary artists, and personal stories from residents of both countries.
All photos: Daniel Annenkov / GES-2
15 March –15 June 2025
GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Lera Kononchuk
Artists: Liza Bobkova, Anna Garafeeva, Maria Romanova, Eugenia Suslova, Gentle Women collective (Aleksandra Artamonova, Evgenia Lapteva)
A project exploring speech “punctuation” as it emerges through body, landscape, and environmental interactions.
This exhibition emerged from observations of speech hesitations, when the smooth flow of sentences suddenly stumbles and breaks into awkward attempts, manifested in gestures, to find the right word to express a thought. We invited the artists to reflect on the meaning and value of this disruption. In works created specifically for the exhibition, the break in speech and bodily reactions appears as a productive shift that reveals the fundamental structure of connections between word, body, and meaning, allowing something new to emerge.
The title of this exhibition, Hesitation Marks, reveals the common thread shared by punctuation marks and hesitation in their role of signalling pauses and interruptions within communication. Punctuation marks are used in text to indicate pauses, intonations, and accents. Thanks to them, the written word acquires the qualities of speech, or at least hints at a physical dimension. Undoubtedly, speech is a bodily phenomenon, and its somatic nature is most evident when it breaks down: when we are out of breath, painfully search for words that are “on the tip of our tongue,” or swallow words due to haste, anxiety, or embarrassment; when we turn to unconscious gestures, giggles, stuttering, and spasms. In a figurative sense, speech has its own “hesitation marks,” but unlike punctuation marks in a text, they do not provide assistance. Hesitation marks in speech rather embody a conflict or show resistance against the environment. At the same time, language as an abstract structure encounters hesitation in the form of the untranslatable or inexpressible—which also often manifests itself physically.
All photos: Daniel Annenkov / GES-2
4 Dec 2021–27 Feb 2022
GES-2 House of Culture, Moscow
Curators: Maria Kramar, Andrey Parshikov, Olga Tsvetkova, Elena Yaichnikova
Artists: New Academy, Yevgeny Antufyev, Olga Chernysheva, Genda Fluid (Antonina Baever), Ellina Gennadievna, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) and the Factory of Found Clothes, Tatyana Gordeyeva, Valentina Lutsenko, Ulyana Podkorytova, Michel Portnoy, Natalia Pshenichnikova, Anna Semenova- Gantz
Works by Russian artists that rethink carnival culture.
When Gondola Engines Were Taken to Bits — A Carnival in Four Acts invites its participants to reflect on the contemporary relevance of the idea of carnival as a universal celebration, one in which familiar rules are turned upside down and everyone can express their individuality in meaningful collective rituals. The four acts of the title are: an exhibition, a street procession, a rave and a series of stand-up performances.
This exhibition mainly features new works by Russian artists, shown alongside a selection of works from the 1990s and 2000s. The show’s historical part explores how participants in a carnival can change how to present themselves through costumes and staged photographs. In 1990s Russia, these actions meant the previously unthinkable possibility of creating a new identity through a carnivalesque makeover.
All photos: GES-2
https://v-a-c.org/en/ges2/when-gondola-engines-were-taken-to-bits-exhibition
Exhibition «Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love?»
November 2, 2016 - January 8, 2017
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Curator: Viktor Misiano
Co-curator of the session: Elena Yaichnikova
Artists : Bisan Abu Eisheh, Rania Bellou, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ion Grigorescu, Nuria Guell, Akram Zaatari, Sophie Calle, Eli Cortinas, Fouad Elkoury, Jonas Mekas, Lee Mingwei, Boris Mikhailov, Tracey Moffatt, Nikolay Oleynikov, Yoko Ono, Koka Ramishvili, Mariateresa Sartori, Anita Sieff, Andy Warhol, Hans Peter Feldman, Gabriella Ciancimino, Katerina Seda.
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the second session of an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional project «The Human Condition». The session «HUMAN AND THE OTHERS. Love, friendship, suspicion, aversion» will focus on a human being in the framework of emotional relationships and his interaction with the social environment.
The session encompasses an exhibition, research projects and discussions. Its starting point is the «Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love?» exhibition, the title of which, following the referential logic of the project, refers to the work «Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love?» by the American artist Sharon Hayes. On display are video works, installations, photographs and books by 23 artists from all over the world including Yoko Ono, Boris Mikhailov, Jonas Mekas, Sophie Calle, and Andy Warhol. Some of the works have been created especially for the show. The exhibition in the MMOMA building at Ermolaevsky Lane is divided into four semantic sections and explores the internal dialectics of, maybe, the most important human emotion — love.
All photos: MMOMA
VII PERMANENT COLLECTION DISPLAY
July 2 - September 27, 2016
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Curator : E.Y.
Artists : Agency of Singular Investigations (Anna Titova, Stanislav Shuripa), Dimitri Venkov, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya), Arseniy Zhilyaev, Irina Korina, Taus Makhacheva (Super Taus), MishMash (Misha Leikin, Masha Sumnina), Ivan Novikov, Alexander Povzner, artistsprivatecollections.org (Anastasia Ryabova), Sergei Sapozhnikov.
MMOMA presents a new display of works from its vast collection of 20th and 21st-century art. This time, the exhibition is structured around a dialogue between the museum collection and eleven invited artists and art groups. Each of them have created a display or a total installation based on works from MMOMA and exploring the everyday life of a museum collection, including issues relating to preservation and transportation of works, the museum’s acquisitions policy and its legal aspects, as well as the life of the artists whose works are in the collection and the broader questions relating to the role and functioning of museums in the modern world. The display will occupy both exhibition floors in the main MMOMA building.
All photos: MMOMA
22 September – 29 November 2011
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Ferran Barenblit
Artists: Ignasi Aballi, Eduardo Abaroa, Halil Altindere, Pilar Albarracin, Francis Alÿs, Alexander Apóstol, Ibon Aranberri, Juan Araujo, Artur Barrio, Iñaki Bonillas, Fernando Bryce, Adriana Bustos, Carlos Garaicoa, Mariana Castillo Deball, Eugenio Dittborn, Héctor Zamora, Los Carpinteros, Joachim Koester, Guillermo Kuitca, Gabriel Kuri, Tonico Lemos Auad, Rogelio López Cuenca, Cristina Lucas, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, Aernout Mik, Antoni Muntadas, Óscar Muñoz, Rivane Neuenschwander, Adrian Piper, El Perro, Wilfredo Prieto, Raqs Media Collective, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Allan Sekula, Melanie Smith, Santiago Sierra, Tunga and Thomas Hirschhorn.
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents art from the collection of the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) of the Regional Government of Madrid and ARCO Collection, Madrid. More than 30 participants with their light installations, large-scale objects, contemporary paintings, drawings, photos and videos attest to the diversity of the regional art scene, their works taken together forming a coherent whole entitled Another Part of the New World.
The special attention to the art of Latin America is only natural for the Spanish culture. For many centuries Spain has been the colonial centre for the countries of Latin American World. The former mother country shares its language and many aspects of culture with the overseas possessions and now it perceives itself as a bridge between Europe and Latin America. In the era of globalisation the relations between the European metropolis torn by economical difficulties and protecting its status of a cultural capital and the region of Latin America living through a period of economical growth and cultural revival are more complicated than it used to be. Economical and geopolitical interests, new ambitions and the search for self-actualization typical of these countries suggest multilevel relations and interconnections, which also reflect the actual reality and global change of the present-day world present regardless of the region. The exhibition Another Part of the New World seeks to disclose challenges and ruptures associated with the passage to contemporary world, the world after the loss of the Socialist utopia and disillusion in the ‘perfect capitalism’, as seen by contemporary artists from Spain, Latin America and in the lesser extent Western Europe and the US. The works on display draw on the social reality in the countries of the Spanish-language world and its emotional reflection, which can equally tell a lot about the present-day world at large.
All photos: MMOMA
GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art / Project Space, Moscow
August 15-September 21, 2014
Curators: E.Y. & N.A.
Artists: Ján Budaj, Stano Filko & Alex Mlynárčik, Tomislav Gotovac, Tibor Hajas, Milan Knížák, Jiří Kovanda, Jan Mlčoch, Neša Paripović, Ewa Partum, Bálint Szombathy and Endre Tót
Personal (Hi-)stories focuses on lesser-known art from the period of 1960s-80s in Eastern Europe, including twelve artists from the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Serbia. The exhibition is the winning proposal selected by an international jury from the first Garage Open Call for exhibitions by emerging Russian curators.
Award-winning exhibition of a curatorial competition organized by GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition supported by: Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art (Budapest), Kontakt Collection/The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation (Vienna), Tomislav Gotovac Institute (Zagreb), Galerie Emanuel Layr (Vienna), gb agency (Paris), Krobath (Wien/Berlin).
All photos: GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art
14 March – 9 May 2012
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Kenjiro Hosaka
Artists: Makoto Aida, Chim↑Pom, contact Gonzo, Dumb Type, Takashi Homma, Takashi Ishida, Takahiro Iwasaki, Izumi Kato, Kohei Kobayashi, Yayoi Kusama, Tatsuo Miyajima, Yasumasa Morimura, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Yoshinori Niwa, Motohiko Odani Yoko Ono, Shinro Ohtake, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Hiraki Sawa, Toshio Shibata, Lieko Shiga, SHIMABUKU, Toshio Sibata, Yoshihiro Suda, Kishio Suga, Tadasu Takamine, Yuken Teruya, Tetsuya Umeda, Akira Yamaguchi, Kenji Yanobe, Tadanori Yokoo
The ‘double perspective’ is provided here by two curators from two different countries, two Museum venues, two thematic blocks constituting the whole of the project. This exhibition jointly curated by Elena Yaichnikova and Kenjiro Hosaka features the works created by about 30 Japanese artists working in different styles between the 1970s and the so-called zero decade (2000-2009). Held at two venues of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the project is composed of two parts: the Reality/Ordinary World and the Imaginary World/Phantasms.
The first part of the project, Reality/Ordinary World, gives the ‘Japanese’ perspective on the outer reality through the 20th century world history (Yasumasa Morimura, Yoshinori Niwa and Yuken Teruya), the reflection on the present-day social structure (Dumb Type and Tadasu Takamine), the interaction with urban space (contact Gonzo and Chim↑Pom) and the quest of poetry in everyday life (SHIMABUKU, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Kohei Kobayashi and Tetsuya Umeda). The Requiem, a video series by Yasumasa Morimura, shows the artist impersonating different historical characters — Chaplin, the writer Yukio Mishima, even Lenin — and acting out the episodes from their life. Another participant Tetsuya Umeda constructs his installation of ’found objects’, using nothing but objects from everyday life. Thus, the most banal and prosy reality transforms into Art.
The artworks, constituting the second part of the project, will feature a free world of imagination, where all we seem unable to perceive in actual reality, all running beyond its limits, could and would exist. They evoke the Japanese pop culture, imaginary world, naivety, myths and cosmogonic concepts. Each artist fills the notion of imagination with a meaning of his own. Thus, Tadanori Yokoo, explores the imaginary world, focusing on the motif of disappearance, or rather vanishing of self. A similar motif finds its way in to the oeuvre of Yayoi Kusama: projecting her fantasies into the real world, she creates a whimsically patterned universe. The Sunchild (2011), a huge sculpture by Kenji Yanobe, was realized in the tragic context of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear explosion. His monumental object turns out to be the crossing point of ‘imaginations’. The artist figures out the experience on the edge of reality to be the impulse towards the creation of a new universe.
Some works were realized specifically for the show. Working on his project Looking for Vladimir Lenin In Moscow Apartments (2012), the artist Yoshinori Niwa came to Moscow to explore the city dwellings in search of artefacts concerning the famous revolutionary. The resulting artwork is the documentation of his quest and related journeys around Moscow.
This two exhibition parts, seemingly irreconcilable, are designed to reveal two extremes of the Japanese art, which, despite their polarity, are bound together in actual reality.
All photos: MMOMA
January, 2012
Festival RussenKo, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France
Curators: E.Y. & N.A.
Artists: Valery Chtak, Alexey Kallima, Irina Korina, Andrey Kuzkin, Taus Makhacheva, Learning Film Group (Yevgeny Fiks, David Riff, Ilya Budraitskis, Nikolay Oleynikov), Serguey Sapozhnikov, David Ter-Oganyan & Sacha Galkina, Arseniy Zhilyaev
Empruntant librement son titre au roman culte de l’écrivain russe Viktor Pelevine dépeignant les années 1990 en Russie, l’exposition Generation P présente de jeunes artistes ayant grandi durant cette période pleine de contrastes, comprise entre les fantômes d’une histoire révolue et les impératifs d’une civilisation consumériste.
December, 2011, Gallery SC, Zagreb
Curator: E.Y.
In collaboration with: Slobodne veze / Loose Associations
Artists: Victor Alimpiev, Irina Korina, Sergey Sapozhnikov, The Factory of Found Clothes (FFC), Arseniy Zhilyaev, ZAIBI group
Exhibition Once Upon a Present introduces a selection of contemporary artists from Russia, and as such, presents itself as a one-nation show. However, while following the line of national representation, it brings forward an antithesis of a traditional promotion of an image of country’s prosperity and power usually effectuated through the mechanisms similar to political propaganda and close to advertisement. Opposite to the idea of an over-visible national show-case, the exhibition seeks to point out to what remains in shadow and lies behind the decorum. Its intention is to touch the middle zone – that of haunting memories, invasive images, attempts, failures, hesitations, fears, unrealized dreams, fantasies, projections, hopes and aspirations for the future, which our present is made of. (…)
Exhibition supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.
Acknowledgements: SC/ Kultura promjene, Ivet Ćurlin (WHW), Bojan Gagić, Saša Šimpraga, Nicole Hewit, Ana Hušman (ALU), Ana Kovačić (GMK), Queer Zagreb festival, Tonka Maleković, Davor Sanvincenti, ANA Elizabet.
Artworks from the collection of
the National Center for Visual Arts of France (cnap)
September 7-October 17, 2010
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau
Artists: Francis Alÿs, Eleanor Antin, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Thomas Bayrle, Guy Ben-Ner, Rebecca Bournigault, Rineke Dijkstra, Julien Discrit, Mounir Fatmi, Claire Fontaine, Yona Friedman, Cyprien Gaillard, Jochen Gerner, John Giorno, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, William Kentridge, Jan Kopp, Pascal Lievre, Olivier Menanteau, Deimantas Narkevicius, Eva Nielsen, Raymond Pettibon, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Bruno Serralongue, Caecilia Tripp
Res publica exhibition based on the collection of the National Center for Visual Arts of France presents works by artists who comprehend art as the space of thought and reflect upon the surrounding social and political reality, as well as our relations with the world. Its title refers to the Latin term ‘res publica’, or ‘common business’, or ‘people’s business’, which in antiquity meant the highest value of social importance and became the basis for contemporary concept of the state and, in a more narrow context, the notion of a republic. Res publica exhibition offers an approach to art as ‘common business’ and presents a sort of public space where artists share their views of the surrounding world and its structure, of man and society, of coexistence and shared life, and find adequate artistic forms of expression.
The exhibition was held within France-Russia Year 2010
Exhibition supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Moscow City Government, Moscow City Department of Culture, Russian Academy of Arts, Moscow Museum of Modern Art National Center for Visual Arts, Ministry of Culture and Communication of France, Culturesfrance, Embassy of France in the Russian Federation.
Catalogue: Les Cahiers de la création contemporaine, cnap, France, issue #6. Bilingual (French/Russian),
34 p.
All photos: MMOMA
September 26-October 25, 2009
Within the Special and Parallel Program
of the 3rd Moscow Biennale
Red October
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau
Artists: Lara Almarcegui, Ilya Budraitskis, Cyprien Gaillard, Aleksandra Galkina, Jiří Kovanda, David Ter-Oganyan, Arseny Zhilyaev
Within the gentrification process overtaking Moscow as it has other capitals of the capitalist world, the space of the former Red October chocolate factory dangles between a hallowed past and a future yet to be determined. At once it speaks for itself and for all other spaces halfway between vanishing and renewal - each with a life and memory of its own. The seven artists featured consider the life of spaces in a specific environment - the 158.9 square meters of the Confectionary Hall. Its hanging cables, chipped tiles, mountain of dust and industrial waste will allow their fragile shelf life to be brought to the fore, for traces of sociopolitical history, a personal presence, or collective experience to be discovered.
Exhibition supported by: galleries Zdenek Sklenar (Prague), Cosmic galerie (Paris) and gb agency (Paris), Mondriaan Foundation, Epson and Red October
The exhibition was awarded a prize as the best curatorial project of the Special and Parallel Program of the 3rd Moscow Biennale announced by OpenSpace.ru
October 2007-July 2008
La box gallery, Bourges, France
Year-long program of exhibitions and public talks
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau
Artists: David Ter-Oganyan and Ilya Budraitskis, Superflex, Nils Norman, Katerina Šedá, Alexey Kallima, Lara Almarcegui
Speakers: Viktor Misiano, Stephen Wright, Michel Giroud, Diane Amiel, Marko Stamenkovic
The starting point for the programme Colocation / Living Together was a series of invitations to artists to create projects specifically for la box. Each contribution is integrated into the la box space and the economic and social context of the city of Bourges, and raises various questions about the nature of artistic actions: the artist's civic and ethical responsibility, reassessment of issues according to context, and place of a specific research in art. Plus, ultimately, the need for coexistence based on the sharing of resources.
Implicitly or explicitly the invited artists assume a kind of responsibility, a "real" commitment to "real" life, considering that current social and political issues call for an ethical stance on the part of citizens in general and artists in particular. But does art have to take on this responsibility? Interventionist artists face the paradox while positioning themselves between utopianism and effectiveness. How does art manage to combine the efficacy with its specific discursive qualities? So, can art and artists help us to live together? And do they have to try?
Catalogue: texts by Boris Groys, Hito Steyerl, Marina Grzinic, Viktor Misiano and Irit Rogoff. Introductory text/Edited by: Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau. Published by La Box_ensa bourges & it: Éditions. Graphic design: Regular / www.readit.fr. Bilingual (French/English), 224 p.
The texts which make up the publication deal with the relationship that art and artists have with the concepts of cause, real contexts of economic or political conflicts, power, the documentary format, or the notions of collectivity, mutuality and participation.
Free Party: some examples of free artistic strategies
Curators: Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau
Free Party - Part 1 - November 5-18, 2006
Moscow Art Center, Neglinnaya 14
Artists: Lara Almarcegui, Conny Blom, Critical Art Ensemble, Dick head man Records
Free Party - Part 2 - March 20-23, 2007 - The Art school of Grenoble, France
Artists: Lara Almarcegui, Conny Blom, Critical Art Ensemble, Valery Chtak, Dick head man Records, Alexey Kallima.
Free Party was specifically oriented on artists and artistic projects that speak about the notion of free. The project was also aimed at exchanging expriences of "free" beetween France and Russia.
«What does the free mean today? What is for free, and what is free to everybody? What does a non-commercial exchange of information, ideas, knowledge, services or commodities mean in the reality of the market economy? Where to look for free and not simulated spaces to speak and to act? Those questions are at the core of the exhibition Free Party that, together with the artists, wishes to appreciate different aspects of the free: freedom, availability, absence of charges...»
