Open Call

4.11 — 27.11.22

Cheboksary

We invite artists to take part in the open competition of the Chuvash Biennale of Contemporary Art

The deadline for submission is Jule 10

Every story, every oral tradition, and every narrative passed down within families is a small piece of a vast canvas that today can barely be completely reconstructed. We are used to the fact that even the most improbable legends must be based on quite tangible facts, and the vast majority of Chuvash material culture objects from the pre-Christian period (until the middle of the 16th century) have been lost or destroyed. Runic writing of the same period is difficult to decipher. However, the Chuvash people save the memory the memory of their heritage, forefathers and ancient rituals, the culture, signs of which are gleaned today and often restored using scarcely perceptible traces.

Due to its transmission almost exclusively by oral means, the republic's cultural history also proved to be incredibly fragile. All this creates a shaky but lively ground capable of accepting all kinds of interpretations and renderings today, fictional and otherwise. The memory kept by the Chuvash people becomes the productive environment. Intricate and occasionally strange flowers with unexpected beauty can grow and already grow in it. The memory is a non-material movable remembrance storage, which becomes a source for construction of the future containing old memories and simultaneously weaves the past in the scarcely perceptible present moment. This future growing based on the past and the present is not separated from the reality of other Russia nations and the whole world. Parts of our common future will be intertwisted and bound.

We invite artists to join us in thinking about how the history of our heritage can be conveyed today. It will not only be about Chuvashia. We are looking to understand how the rich and distinctive history of an individual nation is intertwined with the many histories of other regions and countries.

We will team up with artists to try and answer the question of how the problems of preserving our own historicity can resonate, how we try to hold on to what we have inherited from previous generations, and whether we can pass it on to our posterity.

We are looking to tell the story of how personal, historical, familial, and cultural heritage grows into what today we call modernity, and what tomorrow we will call them our common memory about the future of the common world.

curators

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