A Gift to Birobidzhan: A Discussion with Yevgeniy Fiks

Location: Critical Practices Inc./21ST.PROJECTS, 162 West 21st Street, Apt. #3N, NY, NY 10011

Co-sponsored by YIVO, Critical Practices Inc. and Asylum Arts.

In 1936, 200 works of art were collected by U.S. activists to the Birobidzhan Art Museum as a gift to the new “Jewish autonomous region.” The collection was exhibited in New York and Boston, and then shipped to the Soviet Union, but mysteriously disappeared before reaching its destination.

Seventy years later, in A Gift to Birobidzhan, acclaimed visual artist Yevgeniy Fiks attempts to complete the gesture of this gift by inviting 25 contemporary artists from around the world to donate works of their choosing to the museum in Birobidzhan, raising issues of the 20th century’s history of territorial politics, identity, Communism, and national self-determination. While the museum initially accepted Fiks’s collection, it later refused the offer. Join us for a moderated discussion with artist Yevgeniy Fiks, scholars Kolya Borodulin and Gennady Estraikh (NYU; YIVO), and art curator Sara Reisman (moderator) to discuss this project and its intentions, the historical legacy of Birobidzhan, and its representation in art and culture. This talk is presented in conjunction with Fiks’s current showing of A Gift to Birobidzhan in Chelsea, NYC.

For more information about Yevgeniy Fiks’s A Gift to Birobidzhan project visit here.

About the Artist

Yevgeniy Fiks’s work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions in the United States at Winkleman and Postmasters galleries (both in New York) Mass MoCA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. His work has been included in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011), Biennale of Sydney (2008) and Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007).

Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: “Lenin for Your Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries; “Communist Party USA,” a series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA, painted from life in the Party’s national headquarters in New York City; and “Communist Guide to New York City,” a series of photographs of buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the history of the American Communist movement.