The annual contemporary art festival Here and Now began in Moscow, with organizers noting that the event is staged beyond traditional museum walls for the fifth year in total and the third year in a row in this outdoor format. In all, more than a dozen artworks by contemporary creators from the capital and other regions will populate the urban landscape, turning streets, squares, parks, and cultural centers into living galleries.
Today the project spans both the city center and outlying districts. Public life nodal points such as city squares, parks, cultural venues, and parts of the transportation network become venues for exhibitions, according to the organizers. The project curator describes 2023 as a year of heightened focus on regional writers, bringing fresh perspectives from outside the capital into the public conversation.
Artists are positioned as researchers of unusual urban environments and as communicators of a new visual language. Public art, the curator notes, breathes life into ordinary spaces, inviting people to engage with history and emotion in a shared dialogue and reaching a broad audience across the metropolis.
The first installation appeared in Zaryadye Park, featuring the sculpture Wind. It honors Ulyana, the daughter of Rodion Artamonov from Elektrostal near Moscow, whose porcelain diary documents stages of growth and helped spark a larger project in response to its cues. This piece frames a narrative that blends personal memory with environmental context, inviting viewers to reconsider familiar places through a poetic lens.
Another highlight is Bird Watching by a St. Petersburg writer, presented in the form of a large bird whistle and currently accessible at Bakery No. 9, inviting people to listen as they walk through the cityscape. The third piece in the initial wave comes from Vladimir Chernyshev, a Nizhny Novgorod artist, who contributes the Sundial installation to the Moscow Museum courtyard, offering a reflective moment within the institutional setting.
Additional projects are scheduled to be announced before year’s end, expanding the festival’s footprint across the capital and beyond. Earlier announcements indicated that the Russian Classics festival would travel to Kaluga, Tula, Ryazan, Tambov, and Moscow, featuring works related to Russia’s rich literary heritage, including material linked to figures like Nikolai Gogol in a dedicated one-day program.
Aziza’s debut appearance followed a six-month period of quiet, marking a return that sparked conversations across cultural circles about contemporary art’s capacity to provoke thought and connect audiences to both local and wider historical narratives. The festival’s evolving lineup demonstrates an ongoing commitment to embedding art within the everyday fabric of the city, inviting residents and visitors alike to encounter new voices, diverse perspectives, and unexpected sites that transform ordinary routes into experiences worth sharing. All of this comes with a belief that public spaces can be reimagined when artists, curators, and communities collaborate to illuminate what a city can be when art is allowed to roam freely through its streets and squares. The festival thus stands as a living conversation about place, memory, and the power of art to catalyze civic life, inviting sustained engagement from diverse audiences across North America and beyond. (Attribution: festival organizers and participating artists.)