Lena Liv (b. Leningrad, 1952) returned to her homeland after years in Israel and Italy, and followed, in the series of photographs exhibited here, one of its heroic tales: Moscow’s metro stations.
With a bold, rare examining gaze she focuses on the underground halls of Moscow’s impressive metro stations, built in Stalin’s era as “Palaces for the Proletariat.” Liv photographs mostly in the early morning, before passengers crowd the stations.
Lena Liv, Metro station in Moscow “Taganskaja” (frontal), Image on glass, light box, 96 x 182 x 20 cm
Only a few, refugee-like figures are seen in this group of works. They are wrapped up in layers against the cold, tossing between wakefulness and sleep. Their clinging luggage seems to have become a part of their body. Slumped along the wide stone benches, they are like refugees from a hopeless struggle. Lena Liv’s lens exposes a paradox in the metro’s heroic building work: on the one hand, the buildings were meant to contain within their monumental dimensions a human body in search of domestication; on the other hand, this is building whose far-reaching ideology sought to turn Moscow from an ancient capital to the center of world Proletariat—to sow the “seeds of the new, socialist Moscow,” in the words of the journalists of the time. Above all, it seems that Lena Liv’s works testify that this show architecture was the first sprouts of a city that never materialized.
Exhibition in collaboration with Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is Israel’s leading museum of modern and contemporary art, and home to one of the world’s largest collections of Israeli art. Since its founding in 1932, the Museum has served as one of Tel Aviv’s major cultural hubs, displaying a vibrant mix of permanent collections and temporary exhibitions in a wide variety of fields – painting, sculpture, prints and drawings, photography, video, architecture and design. Each year, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art welcomes more than 500,000 visitors, offering them over twenty annual Israeli and international art exhibitions.
Situated in an impressive architectural complex, the Museum is an integral part of the city’s major cultural center – the Golda Meir Cultural and Art Center – home to the Israeli Opera and the Cameri Theater. One of the most diverse and dynamic cultural institutions in Israel, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art serves as a hub of activity for the local arts scene. In addition to its collections, the Museum presents performances of music and dance, film, and lecture series on philosophy and art.
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