Elena Konyushikhina1; 1 The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK
Discussion
This paper examines the evolution of Marxist exhibition strategies from the 1930s to the present within Russian contemporary art. I argue that Arsen Zhilyaev’s work proposes a new mode of collectivity that challenges the neoliberal order of precarious immaterial labor and exploitation as forms of political resistance. Drawing on the institutional critique of early Soviet modernism, the analysis focuses on the First Marxist Exhibition exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery as a key case study, using it as a point of departure to interrogate the relationship between art, value, and labor. The paper offers new readings of Zhilyaev’s reimagining of Marxist museum practice. Particularly his critical engagement with established art systems, questioning who benefits from cultural production and who is excluded from it.
