Artists Don't Give Up: A Single-Artwork Exhibition Opens on the Amur River

A wooden weather vane on the ice of the Amur River near Khabarovsk became the first exhibit at the annual art exhibition "Narechiye." The sculpture, titled "Waiting for the Wind," was created and installed by renowned street artists, father and son Pyotr and Grigory Matyushkov.  

"My son and I enjoy all kinds of creative expressions, street art, land art, and more. The city administration and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are stifling this exhibition. They could have measured the ice thickness, marked safe passage, and supported this interesting event, but it's easier to ban it," Pyotr Matyushkov told NeMoskva. 

"Narechiye" first took place in the winter of 2019. The exhibition was entirely self-organized: creative people communicated on social media, conceived their works, and then exhibited them on the Amur ice rink. 

The first exhibitions featured giant figures of a whale, a bear, and a fox, along with schools of wooden fish. In the winter of 2021, an art piece featuring a "golden toilet brush" and blue underwear even appeared: a reference to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and his film about Putin's palace. But the conceptual piece quickly faded. disappeared from the ice. 

After this the administration tried ban exhibition and threatened fines for being on the ice. And although there was no information about anyone being punished, the movement slowly began to fade. 

As a result, last year's exhibition featured only one piece. The Matyushkovs constructed a lighthouse from ice floes and illuminated it. "Dark times are not forever," the sculptors captioned their work. 

Photo: DVhab, Instagram @artnarechie