The First Moscow Biennial of street art — ‘Plastic world has won’

A few years ago a biennial of young art took place at Art Play design factory, which, unexpectedly for me, some French street artists attended. There was one of my favorite artists among them, Zeus, notorious for his sharp image

Irony Curtain: Art, Identity and Politics

The lack of reaction to our first post seems proof of what we were thinking: not being sensational elicited almost no reaction. This is a war of words and information with a lack of objective reporting, but not simply that. In this

What Remains of Public Art: Conversation 2 with Harmen de Hoop

In part two of this series of conversations with Harmen de Hoop, we asked him to share his views on perceptions of art in public space: ephemerality, audiences and the role of the media. Conversation pieces are below.     

The Fight for the Melnikov House

Moscow’s historic urban landscape has been under attack ever since Mayor Luzkhov disastrously re-constructed buildings in what he saw as improvements, and ultimately also led to his wife being one of the richest women in the world. Now preservationists and

“Russian Banksy”: Nickname as Insult

Pasha 183, hiding now as P183, became known around the world by the nickname “Russian Banksy.” This happened after a number of articles on websites of several British newspapers used the name. It created a media circus involving a whole string