A walk along the recently created art trail on the Nerl will allow you to enjoy ten art objects that are located on the banks, islands and river surface. The park was opened as part of the Man of the World festival, which will be held from 3 to 11 August in St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Suzdal region.
The sculptural compositions were created by artists from Russia, Latvia, India, Armenia and France. It will be possible to get acquainted with them for the first time on August 10 and 11 at the festival, taking part in a bicycle and water art trip. Guests will enjoy performances in the fields, canoeing, spending the night in a giant hayloft, a "landscape" symphony with a string quartet and a choir performance at the walls of the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl. You can find out all the details
here.
And we present some of the objects that appeared on the river with the comments of the authors.
Evgeniya Kazarnovskaya, director of the Man of the World festival: “Two years ago, Andrei Popov and a group of young architects, with our own money and with our own hands, began to build infrastructure for the eco-park“River of the World”near Suzdal. The Nerl River became the object of our observation, and we intended to create a dialogue between man and the river. Boat trips, long walks and documentation of nature trails have gradually become a source of inspiration for the creation of site-specific features on the shores and water. Less than two months later, we organized an art residence, in which 10 artists from different cities and countries took part. Now on the water routes there are 10 silent sayings of artists, 10 wise stories told to a silent traveler passing by on a boat."
Subot Kerkar, artist, author of the sculpture "Sunflower": “The image of a sunflower was born as a Russian symbol, and it is associated with the history of the appearance of this plant in Russia. Peter the First brought it from Holland, Russian breeders experimented a lot and bred the most persistent sunflower variety that grows only in Russia. This sunflower produces the best sunflower oil, which is known and appreciated all over the world."
Egor Plotnikov, sculptor, author of the "River Flow" diptych: “My sculptural character is immersed in a real landscape: a landscape on canvas has replaced an uninhabited island on the Nerl River. The "sleeping" hero of our time, in whose image you can see yourself, wakes up in reality. The sculpture is static, but the river carries us past the island, and this is an opportunity to feel how time passes. We can stop him for a short while: moor to the shore, climb the island, look around with the new inhabitant of this place, and, finally, hear in ourselves the important thing that the space around us tells us."
Janis Noviks, artist, author of The Reflection Raft: “I wanted to do a project on water transport, because it is one of the oldest ways for people to travel. Notable events in the history of travel on oceans, rivers, canals, lakes are associated with it. Water transport is in the middle: between land and air transport. This is a type of travel where the source of energy is different from a person or an animal - it is the wind. My raft is like a mock-up and it is based on my research in the field of water transport - as a type of historical reconstruction, where part of the history of boat building is compressed into one timeline."
