Arsenyev Museum announces “Minute of Silence”

On August 28, the Museum-Reserve of the History of the Far East named after V.K. Arsenyev opens a new exhibition at the Artetage Center for Contemporary Art. "Beslan." A minute of silence is a tribute to the victims of the terrorist attack in Beslan school No. 1. Tragedy that happened 20 years ago, September 1, 2004. 

The project organizers - the Fund for Support of Culture "Alanika" and the North Caucasus branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin will bring to Vladivostok works of artists from different countries: painting, documentary photographs and video frames, installations. They are acutely conveyed emotions from those terrible events.

Recall: more than 1.2 thousand people were held hostage by terrorists. As a result of the terrorist attack, 334 people were killed, 186 of them were children.

Empathizing with the residents of Beslan, the authors reveal the difficult topic of human tragedy, sublimate their feelings into works of art. The result was a kind of civil act, the human desire of a human artist to share the pain of the Ossetian people, the curators note.

Beslan. Minute of Silence is the name of the project of the artist from Azerbaijan Sabina Shikhlinskaya, which became the name of the entire exhibition project. The main question is: what caused the tragedy? How did adults fail to protect children from death? How to prevent such barbarism in the future? 

The installation of Leonid Tishkov “On the draft” is a simple and understandable allegory of misfortune bursting into people’s lives, destroying the cozy space of the house – the common house.

The work of the Turkish artist Dilara Akai is dedicated to the mothers of Beslan and expresses respect for their grief, the desire to transform this pain into hope for a better future. The continuation of artistic reflection on the inhuman terrorist attack is a series of documentary footage, terrible in its journalistic drama, leaving no hope for the unreality of what happened. Photos are part of the documentary project “Remember to live”, prepared by the Association of Victims of Terrorist Acts “Mothers of Beslan”. 

A high tragic note sounds in the project literary and musical suite “In Memoriam”, which is based on music written by graduates of the Composition Faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory named after N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov in 2014 on the diary memories of children hostages. 

The exhibition “Beslan”. The Minute of Silence was organized on the initiative of the administrations of Vladivostok and Vladikavkaz (we recall that an agreement on sister cities was signed between our two cities fifteen years ago) with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. The host is the Arsenyev Museum. The exhibition will run in the "Artage" (Admiral Fokin St., 25 / Oceansky Prospect, 9) until October 1. 

Materials and photos prepared and provided by the press service of the State United Museum-Reserve.