Natalia Ovsyannikova Archive

The archive contains materials linked to the biography of artist Vladislav Mamyshev‑Monroe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Natalia Ovsyannikova, Vladislav Mamyshev, and Olga Zvereva became friends at Leningrad Secondary School No. 27 in 1986. Documents and photographs created in the course of their communication and preserved by Natalia Ovsyannikova complement the Vladislav Mamyshev‑Monroe archive in three parts that is kept at Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Vladislav Mamyshev‑Monroe Foundation, and in Garage Archive Collection.

The core of the Natalia Ovsyannikova archive is made up of more than 140 letters sent by Vladislav Mamyshev from 1987 to 1993. While offering insight into the details of the artist's biography, in particular, the period of his Soviet army service at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (1987–1989), these documents also contain Mamyshev‑Monroe’s previously unknown “situational” works‑literary texts, collages, and drawings‑thus enabling researchers to trace the evolution of the artist's work with historical and fictional characters. The archive includes handwritten editions of the publications M.V.Yu. Zhurnalchik, and Rupor Molodezhi, photographs by Vladislav Mamyshev, including early costumed photo shoots featuring him as Marilyn Monroe, audio recordings of the artist’s monologues and conversations with Natalia Ovsyannikova and Olga Zvereva, works on paper, and archival documents.

About the artist

Vladislav Mamyshev‑Monroe (1969–2013) was an artist who worked with performance, installation, photography, video, and painting. He was a professor of the Original Genre Department at the New Academy of Fine Arts. He took part in concerts of the band Pop Mekhanika and the programs of Pirate Television (together with Yuris Lesnik, Timur Novikov, and Georgy Guryanov) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and hosted the Pink Block section on Artemy Troitsky’s program Signs of Life on REN‑TV in 2004. Mamyshev‑Monroe is the recipient of the Kandinsky Prize (2007).

About Natalia Ovsyannikova

Natalia Ovsyannikova (b. 1969) is a poetess, author of the samizdat collection Orbit of Three Friends, or Poems and the Nineties, dedicated to Vladislav Mamyshev‑Monroe and Olga Zvereva. From 1988 to 1994 she worked in a secondhand bookstore on Nevsky Prospekt, where she interacted with many personalities from the art world. She lives and works in St. Petersburg.