EXHIBITION OPENING | LENIN: ICEBREAKER REVISITED

Built between 1957 and 1959, the Soviet icebreaker Lenin epitomized the USSR’s policy known as the “Soviet Peaceful Atom,” which involved the use of atomic energy for the purposes of civil engineering. Lenin would operate for 30 years before being decommissioned to serve as a floating museum situated in the northern Russian city of Murmansk.

In its youth, the icebreaker Lenin served as an icon of the socialist utopian ideal: a classless society based on boundless technological progress empowered by the application of nuclear energy. In the world that has emerged in the ensuing years, in which a tiny portion of its population receives limitless services in an automated, computerized, late-capitalist utopia amidst a steadily degrading ecology and decentralized global strife, Lenin: Icebreaker Revisited posits the question: does utopia still have a social function?

“Lenin: Icebreaker Revisited” is based on “Lenin: Icebreaker”, a special cooperative exhibition which was organized by the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow, the LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, and Rosatomflot and presented at the 2013 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. It was curated by Simon Mraz and Stella Rollig, and included exhibitions on the icebreaker Lenin in Murmansk, Russia (09/18/2013–01/10/2014) and at LENTOS Museum in Linz, Austria (2/28–05/25/2014). Curator Olga Kopenkina has revisited the exhibition for the Austrian Cultural Forum New York by including American artists.

Artists: AMY BALKIN, JUDITH FEGERL, YEVGENIY FIKS, JIM FINN, LISA KERESZI, MARKO LULIĆ, LISI RASKIN, ISA ROSENBERGER, LEONID TISHKOV

Curator: Olga Kopenkina

VENUE
ACFNY