Controversial Icons exhibition opens after six-month delay

A controversial contemporary art exhibition about religious icons has opened in St Petersburg after concerns about its reception led to its cancellation in October. The exhibition, Icons, which features the work of 25 artists, first opened in Krasnodar in May 2012 where it was plagued by a series of protests by Orthodox communities and Cossack groups as well as an anonymous bomb threat.

Marat Guelman, director of the PERMM contemporary art museum and curator of Icons, postponed the exhibition on the advice of the St Petersburg-based Rizzordi Art Foundation where it was originally scheduled to open in October. A letter from the Rizzordi Art Foundation, which Guelman posted on his LiveJournal blog, described the atmosphere in the city at the time as “extremely unfavourable”.

The exhibition is now at the Tkachi gallery, a creative hub in a former textiles factory, until 21 April. The gallery will also host a series of lectures and discussions as part of wider efforts to foster dialogue between the city’s contemporary artists and members of the Orthodox church. According to Guelman, the exhibition displays works of contemporary artists who “in different ways conceptualise icons as pieces of art and not as religious objects”.

Concerns about St Petersburg’s decline as the cultural capital of Russia have intensified over the past year in part because of the recently passed anti-gay legislation that bans “homosexual propaganda”. The passage of the bill prompted Venice, a sister city, to break cultural ties with St Petersburg. In a separate incident in January, the producer of a play based on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was assaulted and forced at gunpoint to plead guilty to paedophilia on camera.

Speaking to Russia Beyond the Headlines, Guelman said despite recent events he remained optimistic that “change was in the air” in St Petersburg.