GLOBAL ART LAB
Contemporary Visual Art

Global Art Lab contemporary visual arts projects are designed in collaboration with local partners to respond to the needs and interests of arts communities in Russia and Central Asia. draw on decades of in-house experience organizing arts exchanges in the countries of the former Soviet Union and seek to impact both artists and their communities in sustainable ways. Many prominent artists from different disciplines have participated in this program of exhibitions, workshops, seminars, and residencies: Shirin Neshat, Irving Sandler, Eve Sussman, Chrissie Iles, Mark Jenkins, Evan Roth, Kendal Henry, Eleanor Heartney, Robert Storr, Michael Rakowitz, and Mark Coetzee, among others.

Recent Focus
A recent focus of the Global Art Lab’s visual arts projects is public and socially engaged art. Through workshops with local artists, meetings with city officials, and public presentations, US artists engage the public, challenge preconceptions about contemporary art, encourage interest in public art and demonstrate its potential role in urban environments.

The projects have been conducted in nine Russian and five Central Asian cities. Each year we introduce public art practices to audiences in new cities, and strengthen relationships with organizations committed to developing public art in their own communities. A highlight of our programming in 2012 will be a new festival in St. Petersburg dedicated to bringing contemporary art to the city’s streets.

In 2011-12, Global Art Lab celebrates fifteen years of collaborative creative exchange between Russian and US artists with a series of exciting exhibitions and workshops aimed at acquainting Russian audiences with leading artists in the US today facilitating an on-going dialogue between art specialists and audiences in both countries.

The celebration kicked off with the installation of the video “Pulse” by the US artist Stephen Dean at the Russian Ethnography Museum in St. Petersburg as part of PRO ARTE Foundation’s Contemporary Art in Traditional Museums Festival. The series is curated by CEC ArtsLink’s Russian partners. Their artistic choices highlight their dedication to acquainting the audiences with innovative, often socially and politically provocative, work from around the world. They also reflect a current interest and need in Russia for art practices that address social and political issues and represent a diversity of cultural and ethnic histories.