Co-thinkers exhibition at the Garage Museum
Yesterday night I’ve been to the opening of a new exhibition at the Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary art.
This new Garage’s exhibition “Co-thinkers” is the first initiative to foster equal access to a museum and it has been defined as the Russia’s most extensive program for disabled visitors.
The exhibition aims at moving beyond the definition of “inclusion” as making the Museum physically accessible to a wider audience, exploring how a team can make an exhibition for everyone.
During the development of the project the curators from Garage worked together with four collaborators with varying disabilities to choose eighteen works by world-famous contemporary artists rarely exhibited in Russia.
Intended as a sensory experience for all audiences, Co-thinkers includes interactive stations that combine a range of tools for perceiving art.
In fact, each selected artwork is able to create a perception shift in the viewer’s imagination, stimulating reactions ranging from uncertainty, hesitation, critique, admiration, irony and meditation.
I walked into a completely dark room where the visitor is left alone with his thoughts; I touched 3D models of each work of art and listened to the explanations of the projects and the artists’ stories through headphones placed nearby every work.
The visitors are also invited to write their own opinion by answering to conceptual questions written on several white boards, like “What does it mean to be ugly?”.
Throughout the show, there is also a large public program of tours, talks, and workshops in the gallery spaces, using new formats that have been conceived specifically for this project.
This is the first of a series of annual projects co-produced with four collaborators with different disabilities and it’s seen as a crucial step in combatting discrimination in Russia.
The exhibition opened yesterday and it will be on show until 9 September 2016.
I found the whole experience incredibly interesting and stimulating and I’d suggest visiting the exhibition to everyone.
Matilde Miliazza, currently studying Russian at Liden & Denz.
