Kordegarda Project

artists: Danił Akimow, Oleg Blablas, Aleksiej Czebykin, Obszczeje Wzdragiwanje, Jewgienij Pałamarczuk, Aleksandr Podoprigorow, Jewgienij Umanski, Ksenia Uranowa, Jurij Wasiliew
curators: Irina Czesnokowa, Jewgenij Umanski, Magda Kardasz

The exhibition From Kaliningrad with Love has been organised as part of the Kordegarda Project’s Room with a View ‘urban’ series in association with the Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), the city’s leading artistic institution. The exhibition presents a portrait of Kaliningrad – a city with a complicated history, as seen through the eyes of the visual artists based there. The show features artists from various generations, presenting photographs, video installations and conceptual works. We are also showing documentations of projects carried out by international artists at the tower of the former Kronzprinz army barracks where the Centre is located, as well as an artistic-sociological guide to Kaliningrad it has published. The exhibition also features an architecture-historical section devoted to Königsberg, prepared with the assistance of Jan Salm, Senior Researcher at the Łódź University of Technology’s Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning, an expert on the architecture history of the former East Prussia.For myself, preparing the project was something of a sentimental journey. I first visited Kaliningrad and the area with Jan Salm in 1992, accompanying him on one of his research trips in the region. I returned to the city in the spring of this year to meet my colleagues at the Centre (whom I had known earlier) and the artists in order to discuss the planned exhibition. I very much appreciate the opportunity to experience the different historical moments present in Kaliningrad, to study the changing face of this amazing city of a fascinating history and unobvious beauty.