Projects

MMOMA and the Vadim Sidur Museum, together with the Ruarts Foundation, present a multi-part project HEADWALK by street artist 0331c. The idea of historical memory stored in the artefacts of contemporary urban space is central to the exhibition. Being a street artist 0331c sees the objects of urban environment not only as bearers of certain functions, but also as keepers of local history, as witnesses to different eras.

The history of the project began with quick pencil sketches depicting portraits of random city dwellers, drawn by 0331c for several years. In an attempt to immortalize their memory, the artist turns to the objects of urban daily life that contain traces of human presence — paving stones he found in different parts of the city. The cracks, abrasions and chips serve as evidence of the lives of many generations whose personal stories are now forgotten. With a chisel and a hammer, the artist carves his instant sketches in the «everlasting» gabbro-diabase. The flash strokes of the hand on the notebook paper turn into hours of carving the same lines in granite. Hence, the short-lived art of graffiti acquires a timeless character.

293 paving stone portraits laid out on the floor in the MMOMA space on Gogolevsky 10 represent a collective image of «silent» witnesses to history who remain unnoticed as people take their daily «headwalk». The work captures a knot of complex relations between people, who without regret erase destinies and stories of others from their memory, and it is in this archive of images that the echoes of the past can be heard.

Wishing to remind about the inevitable oblivion, 0331с turns to the lithographic technique and creates a collection of engravings, each of them a print from a paving stone. Made on the finest rice paper, the engravings fly up to the ceiling of the Sidur Museum in an attempt to overcome the finitude of human memory. They obtain true immortality and incorruptibility in granite caskets. The symbolic burial in eternity is accompanied by the March of Silence, a musical piece created for the exhibition by sound artists Gleb Glonti and Mikhail Myasoyedov.

0331c focuses on complex transitions from temporary to eternal, from momentary to permanent. Stones found near the Highway of Enthusiasts, formerly known as the Vladimir Track that served as a cobblestone road taking convicts to Siberia become the guardians of individual memory about people and events. Thus, following the main objectives of the Vadim Sidur Museum the HEADWALK project continues to explore the local context of Perovo and Novogireyevo districts and helps to preserve the local history.

Curators: Catherine Borissoff, Ekaterina Novokshonova

About the Artist:

0331c was born in 1986 in Moscow. The artist has a professional degree in geodesy. Since 2004 0331c has worked as a street artist. His primary media are graphics, sculpture and photography. A characteristic feature of the artist’s individual style is the use of fire, soot and fire extinguishers as work instruments. Another area of the artist’s interest is creating miniature sculptures out of street stones by carving them with a graffiti scalpel. In 2016, with the support of the Atmosphere Creative Association, 0331c and his collaborator Grisha painted three workshop facades of the former Likhachev Plant (ZIL) using fire extinguishers to cover an area of over 10,000 m². In 2017, 0331c’s project 1 Kilometer of Walking Feet was awarded a grant by the Ruarts Foundation and the Artmosphere Creative Association. As part of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2017), 0331c and Grisha held a joint exhibition Soot at MMOMA, organized in collaboration with the Ruarts Foundation.