Evgeny Antufiev

Dead Nations. Eternal version

ETRU – National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, Rome

Press Preview Friday, June 11 | 11 am

Opening Friday, June 11, 2021 | 4-7 pm
June 11 – September 26, 2021

curated by Marina Dacci & Svetlana Marich

Evgeny Antufiev, Untitled, 2020, bronze and amber, Courtesy the artist & z2o Sara Zanin

Evgeny Antufiev relationship with the archaeological heritage embedded in our territory and belonging to
our museums is a long-chaptered novel.
Thus, this is a fascination that Antufiev undergoes for the signal and symbolic stratification, for the
profound echo of ancient stories that continue to speak to us in the halls of museums. What better
synchronicity for an artist who has always explored the idea of immortality and regeneration through
archetypes that have accompanied human existence and imagination in an endless story?

In this chapter, the encounter is with the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, an important
repository of the mysterious Etruscan civilization that - as well as Antufiev’s creative process – absorbed
and spread the contacts and relations with multiple civilizations (from East to West, from the Phoenicians
to the Greeks, to the Carthaginians) and has created a peculiar, very close relationship with the
characteristics of the individual territories in which it has been located, generating something absolutely
new. Antufiev’s work transports in time and space symbolic figures that have always accompanied human
existence and imagination.

His ceramics as well as the bronze castings, with textures and oxidized surfaces treated with patina and
particular baths, evoke ancient discoveries and resemble a "gift" found in the subsoil. The presence of a
figure in transformation goes well with the Etruscan iconographic repertoire which is beautifully
illustrated in the objects exhibited in the Museum of Villa Giulia. The formal outcome is intriguing,
labyrinthine, absolutely unique: Antufiev’s works take on a hybrid identity, they are capable of generating
assonances between different worlds and cultures, but inevitably they are filtered through the culture of
the artist's country of origin, Siberia, and the Russian folk tradition in the way materials are treated.

To welcoming us, in the garden, a travertine obelisk, an invitation to the celebration of what cannot be
swallowed by oblivion, of what cannot die. Maybe, the ultimate purpose of a museum? A small fountain in
the hemicycle is a tribute to water, a key element in the passage of time and vital transformation.

The exhibition develops from a specific wing of the museum, by grafting into its framework and creating
an exchange with its current heritage. Some small interventions in the display cabinets do not interrupt the
historical collections: Antufiev reinterprets the objects - originally created for functional and decorative
purposes – and transforms the vision of an artefact into a work of art. Many of these objects, found in
tombs as grave goods (a testimony to the importance of a rite of fundamental passage between life and
death) offer a figurative repertoire comprising, above all, fantastic animals drawn from orientalising
bestiaries that have the meaning of guardians of the tombs: an iconography which is strongly present in
Antufiev’s formal research.
Finally, the exhibition envisions a phantasmagorical museum room created inside the museum itself: a
fictitious space in which the artist stages, inside display cases and cabinets, an imaginative relationship
between objects and figures, most of which are fusions and terracotta, as a tribute to the refined Etruscan
craftsmanship that was expressed above all with these materials.
Marina Dacci

Celebration of Life

Evgeny Antufiev extensive research of extinct cultures and their artefacts leads his artistic practice to the
creation of art objects manifesting the symbols of no time: mirrors, warriors, masks, knives and vessels
hold cultural relevance for any era, therefore an ongoing dialogue between found ancient objects and
newly made artistic items becomes a celebration of life, passing from earlier centuries into contemporary
world and future, spreading from museum context to contemporary and future households, bonding our
memories with reality of future generations.
The patterns that Evgeny draws within his practice are not becoming the constellation of objects solely:
marble obelisk sharpened into space in the middle of Villa Giulia stands as another solid element on the
world map of human made obelisks, adding Rome as a part of Cairo, Paris, New York, Vatican, Istanbul,
Luxor, Judea obelisks constellation, connecting ancient times with rising contemporary culture.
The embodiment of new art objects into existing museum and even urbanistic environment always resets
its spatial dynamics, and in Antufiev’s case, elevates it to an awakening level of synergy, which hasn’t
existed before.
The artist and his world of objects incorporated in the space of Villa Giulia, historically charged with
various codes and meanings, bring us to new sensations, manifesting our time as deeply connected with
past and future, beautifully weaved within each other in timeless language of art.

Svetlana Marich

INFO

SOLO SHOW: Evgeny Antufiev

TITLE: Dead Nations. Eternal version
PRESS PREVIEW: Friday, June 11 | 11 am
OPENING: Friday, June 11, 2021 | 4-7 pm
DURATION: June 11 > September 26, 2021
CURATED BY: Marina Dacci & Svetlana Marich
LOCATION: ETRU – National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia
ADDRESS: Piazzale di Villa Giulia 9, 00196 Rome
PRESS OFFICE: Sara Zolla | press@sarazolla.com | T. 346 8457982

The exhibition Dead Nations. Eternal Version by Evgeny Antufiev is co-produced by Malevich.io.
Malevich.io is a platform dedicated to supporting artists and museums with institutional
exhibitions, helping to finance the production of works and their enhancement.
Recognizing /self-recognizing
He walks along the museum halls.
Footsteps resound
statues follow him with their hundred eyes.
Water, fire, earth
are still alive
in the lit objects,
resting in glass cases:
they haven’t yet left behind
their homes, their fields, the touch of hands.
Witnesses of what cannot die.
Hands and bodies clinging to the earth
its fruit
its pleasures
its prophecies born of its entrails
It was water
it was fire
Death and life are always conjoined
Processions of witnesses
objects of living flesh:
an endless circle
because death resides in life
and life in death
Surviving time,
surviving over time.
Accepting death
as part of life.
The museum is a big tomb,
the silence of deep slumber
holding onto the echo of what has been.
The museum is the custodian
becoming treasure chest:
presenting objects,
fragments of life
that He can encounter
by imagining hardworking hands
earthly pleasures,
dreams of immortality.
Eternal flow of things.
He fills
the body of all the objects
of all the ideas
of all the experiences
that he has of it
and finds back
every time he looks at it
with his eyes.
Grasping the feeling of a people
bringing it back to life,
with new eyes.
The gaze must be awoken.
And Robert Graves comes to mind:
“Yonder beyond all hopes of access
Begins your queendom; here is my frontier.
Between us howl phantoms of the long dead,
But the bridge that I cross, concealed from view
Even I sunlight, and the gorge bottomless,
Swings and echoes under my strong tread
Because I have need of you.
(The Gorge in Poems, 1965-68)

Marina Dacci

Evgeny Antufiev (Kyzyl, Tuva, Russia, 1986) lives and works in Moscow.
After the studies at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Moscow, in 2009 and 2019 he won the
Kandinsky Prize respectively in the category The Young Artist and Project of the Year.

In 2021 Antufiev will be among the invited artists at the fifth edition of the New Museum Triennial Soft
Water Hard Stone, curated by Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring (Curators at the New Museum), and
Jamillah James (Senior Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles).

In 2019 he has been invited at the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art and he took part to the
group show Jeunes artistes en Europe - Les métamorphoses at Cartier Foundation in Paris. In the same year I
had his special project Dead Nations. Golden Age Version, curated by Marina Dacci at Chiesa di San Giuseppe
delle Scalze in Naples.

In 2018 he took part at Manifesta 12 in Palermo with a special project at Museo Salinas, When art became part
of the landscape. Chapter I, curated by Marina Dacci and Giusi Diana. In the same year he had his solo show
When art became part of the landscape: part 3, at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow and a dual show at
the Konekov Museum in Moscow.

In 2017 he had solo shows at MHKA – Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp – and at MOSTYN
Museum in Wales and he took part to the Garage Triennale of Contemporary Art at Garage Museum in
Moscow.

In 2016 he has been invited by Christian Jankowski at Manifesta 11 with a special project and in September
2016 he did a performance at the Whitechapel Gallery in London with Cabaret Kultura with V-A-C Live.
Among his solo shows: MMOMA in Moscow (2015), Multimedia Art Museum di Mosca (2014), Collezione
Maramotti in Reggio Emilia (2013) and among the group shows: New Museum, New York (2011) and
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012).

His works are included in important collections, both public and private: TATE Modern, London, UK;
Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; MHKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium;
Agovino Collection, Naples; De Iorio Collection, Trento, Italy; Jean-Pierre Rammant Collection, Belgium;
Vittorio Gaddi Collection, Lucca, Italy; Nomas Foundation, Rome, Italy.