Yevgeniy Fiks
Ian Ginsburg

Desire international

A TWO-ARTIST SHOW EXPLORING QUEER SENSUALITY AND IMAGINATION

25 November 2021 – ended 26 February 2022
Open every Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pm. Free to attend.

Pushkin House presents a two-artist exhibition Desire International by two contemporary artists Yevgeniy Fiks and Ian Ginsburg, exploring the utopianism of queer sensuality and imagination. These two very different projects will be in dialogue with each other to unpack the potentials of visual and verbal language in capturing queer identities in the Soviet realm and beyond.

Dictionary of the Queer International by Yevgeniy Fiks ambitiously suggests the possibility of a global emancipatory language made up of words and phrases related to queer identities in various cultures. The dictionary brings together expressions from different languages, including insiders’ slang used by representatives of sexually and gender non-conforming communities (such as ‘Tematicheskiy’ in Russia, ‘Beki’ in the Philippines, ‘Polari’ in the UK and ‘Pajuba’ in Brazil) and reclaimed slurs. Fiks further explores the potential of the invented language by creating a series of poems and turning them into provocative banners.Visitors are encouraged to respond to the first edition of the Dictionary of the Queer International by introducing new materials and providing feedback based on their own experiences and viewpoints. The banners and a special edition of the Dictionary of the Queer International were designed by Katya Sivers.

As part of Ian Ginsburg’s first presentation in the UK, Pushkin House will exhibit his project A Barrack Named Desire: Reframing Viktor Duvidov. As both an artist and collector, Ian Ginsburg recontextualises the legacy of the prominent Soviet artist Viktor Duvidov (1932–2000). Known primarily as a children’s book illustrator, Duvidov was convicted for homosexuality during the Soviet era. Later he created a series of erotically charged etchings and woodcuts, partially based on his prison experiences. By finding visual and conceptual connections between the playful illustrations intended for children’s gaze and the sombre intimate images of prison life and male corporeality, Ginsburg reflects on our understanding of beauty and aesthetic innocence and turns the low-brow creative ambition to decorate into an impactful practice. Using original works by Duvidov and Soviet-era books as well as various found elements, Ginsburg has created a series of collages and complex formal structures, reframing our perceptions of double identities and rediscovering queer sensuality in sterilised visual produce.

Yevgeniy Fiks: ‘The question of culture and language comes to the foreground more than ever at times of political uncertainty as a form of cultural resistance to both hierarchical globalisation and a nationalism of exclusion. In this current political and cultural situation, Dictionary of the Queer International proposes a vision of international, intersectional and non-hierarchical queer culture via the creation of an imaginary queer fusion-language.’

Ian Ginsburg: ‘When I became interested in Duvidov, I decided to rebuild the narrative of his creative life using clippings and cuttings of his work. The printed works, published in millions of copies, come into contact with rare etchings and woodcuts, as well as unique works, erasing the difference between them. In a sense, I follow the method of Ilya Kabakov who would invent characters in his work, but while Kabakov treats them formally, my narrative, on the contrary, is based on the biography of a real person – Viktor Duvidov.’

About the artists

The work of Yevgeniy Fiks (b. 1972, Moscow) reflects on the dialectical relationship between Soviet socialism and ‘the West’, the legacies of international communist utopia and histories of sexual and gender dissent – and often relies on archival research and collaboration. His personal projects include Pas de Trois, Tallinn City Gallery, Tallinn (2021); Mister Deviant, Comrade Degenerate, Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ (2019); Mother Tongue, Pushkin House and GRAD, London (2019), Optica Bronstein (with Pablo Helguera), The Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2017), Andy Warhol and The Pittsburgh Labor Files, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2015); Monument to Cold War Victory (with Stamatina Gregory), The Cooper Union, New York (2014); Homosexuality Is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America, Winkleman Gallery, New York (2013); Communist Tour of MoMA (Performance), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Modern Art Shackled to Communism, Galerie Sator, Paris (2012); Communist Party USA, Marat Guelman Gallery, Moscow (2007), among others. He also participated in numerous group exhibitions at various institutions, including Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York), Postmasters Gallery (New York), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), Museu Colecção Berardo (Lisbon), V-A-C Foundation (Venice), Calvert22 (London) and Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Fiks lives and works in New York.

In his practice Ian Ginsburg (b. 1988, Moscow) creates complex homages to artists of previous generations, mainly those whose artistic development defined Soviet culture in 1960s–1970s. Exploring both formal approaches and ideological structures of their work, Ginsburg, who even took the name of his friend, mentor and teacher Iosif Ginsburg (1938–2016), approximates their methodological positions by creating imaginary archives of carefully constructed forms and images. Ian Ginsburg has had solo exhibitions at the Voznesensky Centre and Osnova gallery and participated in group exhibitions at the Garage Museum of Сontemporary Art, Moscow Museum of Modern Art. He was awarded the Moscow Art Prize (2020) and nominated for the Kandinsky Prize (2019, 2021), Innovation Award (2015, 2021) and the Present Continuous programme organised by the V-A-C Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2018). Ginsburg lives and works in Moscow.

Katya Sivers (b. 1979, Moscow) is an artist, designer and researcher working at the intersections of visual art and technology. She addresses broad social and political issues dealing with the modes of co-existence and knowledge production by artistic collaborations and multidisciplinary design practice. Her work has been presented at a vast number of exhibitions including Bi-City Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, 4th Industrial Ural Biennial, 4th Moscow Biennial, 3rd Moscow Biennale of Young Art. Sivers lives and works in London and Moscow.

For further information please contact Pushkin House at +44 [0] 20 7269 9770 or the exhibition curator Denis Stolyarov at denis.stolyarov@pushkinhouse.org.uk.