Natalia Kamenetskaya is one of the first art historians and curators in Russian contemporary art to work in the field of gender and feminist studies.

Her archive consists of several parts. The first contains her collection of photographs and slides from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, including documentation of exhibitions (Boundaries of Gender (1999), Museum of Time (1998), Art, Feminine: Russian Women Artists of the 15th to the 20th Century (2002)) and discussions (the conference March 8 for the exhibition The Woman as a Subject and an Object in Art (1990)). The photographic archive features portraits of women in art: Anna Alchuk, Tatyana Antoshina, Elena Goschilo, Galina Zvereva, Natalya Kigai, Anastasia Pakhomova, Tatyana Petrova, Olga Tobreluts, Vera Sazhina, and Kamenetskaya herself, as well as photographs and slides of artworks by Vita Buivid, Ilona Gantsovskaya, Nina Kotel, Ekaterina Kornilova, Marina Kruchinina, Tatyana Liberman, Bella Matveeva, Tatyana Petrova, Natalia Turnova, Vera Sazhina, Aidan Salakhova, Tatyana Spasolomskaya, Olga Chernysheva, and Kamenetskaya herself. A unique part of the archive is made up of photographs of events related to the art world: Kamenetskaya’s birthday party at home, get‑togethers at Tatyana Antoshina’s, New Years’ Eve at Elena Kochina’s, and more.

A large part of the archive comprises documents and texts: technical briefs for exhibitions and conferences, business correspondence, agreements, museum records, letters of recommendation, grant and scholarship applications, receipts, contacts, orders, office notes, expert evaluations for the export of art, article manuscripts and press clippings, talk notes, completed and unfinished projects for exhibitions, programs, conferences, and residencies. These include documentation for the exhibition and conference The Woman as a Subject and an Object in Art (1990); the project Museum of Women’s Art (2007–2008), the exhibition ŽEN d’АRТ: The Gendered History of Art in the Post‑Soviet Space, 1989–2009 (2010); the conference Integration of Cultures in a Polyethnic Space (2013), and the press pack for the exhibition International Women’s Day (2015). In addition, the archive contains documents for the project Museum of Desire (1994–2012): materials for the projects, drawings, sketches, photographs, and copies of works by Anna Alchuk, Elena Gubanova, Svetlana Osmachkina, Vera Sazhina, Aidan Salakhova, Natalia Turnova, Olga Florenskaya, Maria Chuikova, and others.

A separate part is made up of the archive of the creative laboratory INO (1996–2012): excerpts from meetings minutes, financial statements, a copy of the registration certificate, the charter, legal information. The archive also includes materials related to the publication of the journal Idiomy (1989–1995): copies of artworks, artists’ photographs, labels, applications, reviews, printouts with English texts and numerous preparatory materials for art projects (descriptions, sketches, copies of works, thank‑you letters, invitations, drafts of works, web printouts, scans of journals and exhibition catalogues). Other materials include artists’ CVs in Russian and English, exhibition reviews, a chronicle of women’s art, and documents for international projects: the exhibition of Russian and Korean artists Urbi et Orbi at the Russian State University for the Humanities (2015), the first international conference Contemporary Art of the East (2015), trips to the United States with Alla Efimova and Lev Manovich (1990), and more.

An important part of the archive is the collection of ephemera gathered by Kamenetskaya from 1996 to 2015, including programs of conferences at the Russian State University for the Humanities and other universities, discussion and exhibition invitations, booklets, event posters and press releases, leaflets, business cards, postcards, and congratulations cards.

The archive includes a collection of books, journals, papers, and exhibition catalogues on gender, including a set of the journal Gender Studies and catalogues of exhibitions by Irina Waldron, Elena Kovylina, Irina Nakhova, Aidan Salakhova, Marina Chernikova, the group Factory of Found Clothes, as well as special publications on gender studies.

About the archive creator

Natalia Kamenetskaya (b. 1959, Moscow) founded the group of women’s creative research Idioma in 1989, and from 1989 to 1992 was co‑editor of the journal of feminist critique of the same name. In the early 1990s she worked on the project for the Museum of Women’s Art, which was never established. In 1996, she co‑organized the first self‑organized feminist exhibitions of the creative laboratory INO [Art, Science, Education]. From 1994 to 2015, she was a teacher in the department of gender studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities and curator of exhibition projects at the RSUH Museum Center. Since 2009, she has been the chair of the gender project section at the Creative Union of Artists of Russia. In 2010, she co‑curated the exhibition ŽEN d’АRТ: The Gendered History of Art in the Post‑Soviet Space, 1989–2009 (2010) at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Since 2017, she lives and works between Moscow and Jerusalem.

Performing the Archive. Collective Actions in the 1970s and 1980s