An exhibition presenting works that interrogate dialectics of attitudes to identity, cultural differences and exchange.

Is today's Russian art a part of the international art world or is it still situated in its own set of traditions? Artists Charbel Ackerman, Tatiana Baskakova, Olga Bozhko, Daniel Bragin, Olga Jürgenson, Maria Kapajeva, Elena Kovylina, Anna Kuznetsova, Flávia Müller Medeiros, Ivgenia Naiman, Ellen Nolan, Yelena Popova, and Veronica Smirnoff investigate this question.

Moscow-based artists Olga Bozhko and Anna Kuznetsova attempt to reset iconic symbols of Russia in the context of the contemporary western culture. So does London-based artist Veronica Smirnoff, whose elaborated paintings combine medieval tempera technique she studied at a Russian monastery with features of traditional schools of 20th century. In contrast, installations by Daniel Bragin and paintings by Yelena Popova look typically European, nothing in them suggests the artists' Russian roots.

A video by Elena Kovylina, a leading performance artist working in Moscow, explores the post-Cold War condition of Russian culture that, according to her mind, carries post-colonial features.

The work “Irka” by conceptual artist Flavia Muller Medeiros investigates trauma of crossing Western borders for young Eastern Europeans. British artists such as photographer Ellen Nolan and painter Charbel Ackerman question identity as a personal feeling of being unique, as a controversial cause of alienation.

The works by Russian-born artists, who studied art in the West and are now based in London show a spectrum of attitudes towards national identity. Young artist and activist Tatiana Baskakova looks at today's landscape of the Russian city with the critical eyes of a politically-engaged western intellectual. Ivgenia Naiman's canvases refer to retrospective nostalgia as a reason for formal experimentation. Large monumental paintings by Olga Jürgenson provide ironic narratives about Soviet-era clichés of 'Englishness’. Photo portraits by Maria Kapajeva unwittingly accentuate the model's national identity, which is achieved by letting the model stage the scene according to his or her understanding of self. The exhibition raises the question whether we should link artistic identity with nationality and how it can influent artist's practice