Contemporary Art of Yakutia Archive

The archive is a collection of documents, text materials, ephemera, digital copies of artists’ works, periodicals, details of installations and works by artists, and photo and video documentation of events. It is based on the private collection of curator and artist Elena Vasilieva, who has been gathering materials about contemporary art since 2010.

Many of the documents relate to the period of active growth of projects by artists, institutions, and festivals of contemporary art in the late 2000s and 2010s. They include documentation of the projects Nomadic Khabar Scrolls and ArkT‑NAVIGATSIYA, the exhibitions Reverse Perspective, Black‑and‑White Civilization, Narrow Gaze, From Here to Here, Wheel, Svetuarii, 12 Eyes, We, Art Box, In the Open Sky, Prototypes of Olokhno, I Am (Not) Scared, Arctic Chronotope, Snow Man, Save Laughter for Winter…, and others.

The Contemporary Art of Yakutia archive is supplemented with documents about the activities of institutions on the 2010s and 2020s: the International Yakut Biennale of Contemporary Art (2010, 2014, 2018), the Zero Arctic Biennale, the Ayar Kut Foundation for the Support of the Contemporary Art of Yakutia, the Gagarin Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, which is a branch of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the Arctic State Institute of Art and Culture, the TAG art residency, and others.

Another important part of the collection is personal archives of members of the art community that document individual and collective creative biographies.