The last three years have been a period of profound sadness for Teresa Iarocci Mavica, the former director of the Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation, which she co-founded in 2009 with Leonid Mikhelson. He’s one of Russia’s richest men and a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
At V-A-C, Mavica was responsible for building the GES-2 House of Culture, Russia’s biggest contemporary art museum, of which she was also director. In November 2021, however, just one month before it opened, Mavica resigned, citing “exhaustion.” Then, three months later, just as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Italian curator left her adopted home and returned to Italy.
For 30 years, Mavica worked to build deep cultural ties between Russia and Europe. All that work unraveled in a heartbeat, as the world quickly distanced itself from anything Russian in the wake of the invasion. As she told ARTnews in a recent interview, her first since disappearing from the art world, she was devastated.
“The divide between Russia and Europe has grown immense, and many have fallen into that chasm,” Mavica said. “Artists, brilliant minds, beautiful young people. It’s heartbreaking.”
In March, Mavica started her comeback, curating “The Sun to Come” at Made in Cloister, a private cultural foundation in Naples. Running until the end of May, the exhibition inaugurates Mavica’s aptly named biennial program “REBIRTH.” It’s part of her independent “nonlineare” curatorial initiative, which seeks to elevate artists above curators.
Now, as the war rumbles into its fourth year, Mavica is quietly rebuilding cultural bridges: three of the ten artists who feature in “The Sun to Come” are Russian. They are Alexandra Sukhareva, Anastasia Ryabova, and Olga Tsvetkova.
“I want it to be clear that I did not ‘die’ when I left V-A-C, I am not V-A-C,” Mavica said during a recent lunch at her apartment in Naples, where she now lives. “V-A-C was a program, an institution, many people. I am now the anonymous curator of ‘The Sun to Come.’ Many people have asked me why my name is not included in the show’s text. I tell them that it’s not about my name, it’s about continuing my work and keeping the dialogue between Russia and Europe alive. We need to reflect on what has happened since February 2022, and what we’ve lost.”
Made in Cloister occupies the stunning former 16th-century cloister of the Church of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples’ Porta Capuana neighborhood. And Mavica’s exhibition, “The Sun to Come,” takes its name from an Italian partisan song. The song is both hopeful, and a warning: the sun can give life, but it is also destructive. While Mavica said she staunchly believes that art transcends politics, the scepticism rooted in the exhibition’s title reflects her disappointment at a world that has turned its back on Russian culture.
The works on view, including Vietnamese artist Danh Vo’s untitled golden statue of Christ and French artist Clément Cogitore’s poignant film Les Indes Galantes, interrogate the notion of rebirth—both as a tangible reality and as a hope-fueled aspiration.
Mavica first moved to Russia in 1989 as a student and quickly earned a reputation for developing the country’s contemporary art scene, which was embryonic at the time. She met Mikhelson in 2007 while working on a project at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Soon after Mikhelson offered Mavica a job managing his private collection, but she only accepted on the condition that he support her in building a foundation to “preserve the legacy of the present by supporting contemporary artists.” V-A-C Foundation was born two years later.
(While Mikhelson was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022, he has not been sanctioned by the US, though several companies and ships supplying his Novatek gas company are.)
In an era when the international art world continues to distance itself from Russia, Mavica remains unapologetic about her loyalties. “For a long time, I have swum against the current, and I have no intention of changing,” she said. “I have always believed that Russian culture is an integral part of European culture, and I will continue to do everything to promote this conviction.”
When asked about Russian artists being blacklisted, Mavica questioned passionately what a Russian orchestra has to do with the war in Ukraine, as Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, performed by Dmitry Shostakovich, crescendoed on the surround sound during our lunch.
“I naively expected a different reaction from the art world, a more mature reaction,” she said, lamenting that neither the Venice Biennale nor the organizers of the Russian Pavilion reached out in 2022 to keep the pavilion open. “The door was closed on Russian culture, and it’s tragic.
(The Russian Pavilion was closed soon after the start of Russia’s invasion).
Mavica added that “people give her strange looks” for her stance, but she stressed that she also worked with Ukrainian artists long before the war: “I never cared for an artist’s passport, only their work.”
Mavica’s sudden departure from V-A-C fueled rumors. Artforum, for example, suggested that Mikhelson pushed her out the door because he was unhappy with the negative publicity generated by a huge Urs Fischer sculpture installed in front of GES-2.
“That’s completely untrue,” she said. “Someone also wrote that I left because Putin didn’t like the opening exhibition at GES-2. That’s false. I left before he even visited.”
Artforum also reported that the GES-2 curatorial team, who she described as the “best she’s ever worked with,” quit when she left her post. Mavica denied this too, adding that she spent months trying to convince them to stay, even after Russia invaded in 2022.
Mavica is not the only prominent Italian curator with links to V-A-C. Italian curator Francesco Manacorda was the director of V-A-C’s outpost in Venice, though he quit in protest of Russia’s warmongering and it shut down in May 2022. He is now the director of Castello di Rivoli in Turin. The outspoken Francesco Bonami, whose impressive resume includes directing the 50th Venice Biennale and the 2010 Whitney Biennial, worked with V-A-C for the past 14 years and recently co-curated a show at GES-2.
“I don’t like the man,” Mavica said of Bonami. “I also don’t like cynics and double-dealing behavior. I stopped speaking to him well before GES-2 opened. However, I profoundly respect him for continuing to work with V-A-C.”
V-A-C’s Venice building is now occupied by the recently launched nonprofit arts center Scuola Piccola Zattere, run by Mikhelson’s daughter, Victoria. Several artists dropped out of its inaugural show in December after ARTnews asked them about its links to the Mikhelson family.
“I don’t know anything about the project, but I completely disagree with the idea of refusing to work with Russian artists. I can’t relate to the idea that you can forget the past and move on,” Mavica said. “Frankly, it’s childish that some artists dropped out of the show … This should prompt a reflection on how independent and autonomous culture truly is from politics today.”
Despite Mavica feeling burnt by the art world, “The Sun to Come” is ultimately an exhibition about hope. But with the war in Ukraine showing no end in sight, Mavica is unsure how cultural relations will improve between Europe and Russia.
“I’d like to answer this as if I’m still in Russia: Russians feels a deep sense of betrayal, not only politically but culturally,” she said. “From the Russian perspective, do you think they’ll simply open their arms and say, ‘Welcome back’? It could happen, but it will take time. We need to learn from the mistakes that were made. I can imagine my former colleagues in Russia asking, ‘Why did you slam the door shut?’”
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