Exhibition opening: 1990. THE LAST NOVEMBER (Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York; October 20, 2015)

http://harriman.columbia.edu/event/1990-last-november-0

Tuesday, October 20, 2015
6:00pm
Harriman Institute Atrium (12th Floor, 420 West 118th Street)
Please join the Harriman Institute for the exhibit opening and reception with remarks by the artists, Natasha and Valery Cherkashin.

The exhibit features unique black and white hand manipulated photographs by the artists Natasha and Valery Cherkashin. The exhibit will commemorate the “Last November” –the final official celebration of the October Socialist Revolution to take place on Red Square. That day, a huge portrait of Lenin unfurled outside of the GUM [State Department Store] for the last time. People from all over the Soviet Union came to Moscow, walked in Red Square, and took photos in front of Lenin’s Tomb. The exhibit will feature images from the Cherkashins’ series, “Art for the People,” which capture portraits of the bronze sculptures of Soviet heroes and workers from the 1930s in Moscow’s Revolutionary Square metro station.

Both of these series were originally exhibited in the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts in 1994, under the title “4+4 Late Modern: Photography Between the Mediums,” along with an installation called “Moscow’s Red Square in Santa FE.” After the Santa Fe exhibition, the Cherkashins did not have a place to store the works. They were stored by the couple’s friends Claire Shipman (a Columbia University and Harriman alumna) and Jay Carney, who moved from one place to another, taking the works with them for nearly twenty years. The Cherkashins haven’t seen these works since and are excited to exhibit them at the Harriman Institute.

An interview conducted with the artists on the occasion of the exhibition by SHERA member Natasha Kurchanova can be found here.

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