Contact with the Russian Underground

Lizaveta Mateeva is curator of LUDA Gallery in St. Petersburg. This organisation is an important meeting place for independent artists.

The gallery’s curators, one of whom is Lizaveta Mateeva, want to form a counterbalance to the increasingly greater focus in the Russian market on classical art from the big cultural institutes in St. Petersburg. LUDA focuses instead on a young generation of artists who want to work independently and are increasingly internationally oriented.

Networks and creative spaces
This past September, DutchCulture travelled to Moscow and St. Petersburg to scout out new independent networks and make contacts there. By doing so, DutchCulture wants to stimulate future cultural exchange between the Netherlands and Russia. In St. Petersburg, Russia experts Ruben Eijkelenberg and Sjeng Scheijen spoke with Lizaveta Mateeva and invited her to the Netherlands for a working visit.

The focus during her working visit from 28 March through 1 April will be such themes as artist-in-residencies, breeding grounds and artist-organised initiatives in the Netherlands. DutchCulture will guide Mateeva and introduce her to various organisations within the Dutch cultural sector.

Nonconformist St. Petersburg
By now, artists from all over Russia are eager to work with LUDA Gallery and even prominent and successful Russian artists are interested in collaborating with LUDA. It is a place where they can reinvent themselves and connect up with the younger generation. An article recently published in Calvert Journal Going underground: the art gallery bringing the rebel spirit back to St Petersburg sees this development as a revival of the nonconformist attitude that characterised the city in the 1980s and 90s.

More information about DutchCulture’s visitors programme Russia