I don’t know whether the Earth is spinning or not...
I don’t know whether the Earth is spinning or not... is a digital exhibition that brings together emerging artists, writers, and poets from over nine countries who have been living, working, and surviving amidst these challenging times. The bespoke digital platform was conceptualized as a reimagined urban landscape, distorting famed Moscow landmarks, the host city of the Biennale, where a modified and abbreviated presentation of the digital exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Moscow.
The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Khlebnikov’s 1909 poem of the same title, which illustrates the poet’s radical rejection of normative conventions and his deep mistrust of his own grasp on reality. The exhibited works confront the estrangement, disassociation, and vulnerability festering in the heart of today’s dark times, by interweaving satire, irony, the comical, the uncanny and the grotesque into multi-media digital works. The exhibition is characterized primarily by figural works, artistic expressions of the self, as elucidated through the fog of global catastrophe, and nearly half the participating artists are from the Russian Republic, therefore adding the unique perspectives of their nation's storied avant-garde tradition to the exhibition.
Francesca Altamura is a curator and organizer living in New York (unceded Canarsie/Lenape lands). She recently curated "I don't know whether the Earth is spinning or not...", with Lizaveta Matveeva, one of the Main Projects of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. The digital exhibition is on view at notspinning.world. In 2021, they will curate a group exhibition together at Haus N, Athens, Greece. In 2019, she co-curated “Diedrick Brackens: darling divined” with Margot Norton, for the New Museum in New York; the exhibition will travel to the Blanton Museum of Art, Texas, in 2021. At the New Museum, she also curated presentations by Randa Maroufi (2020), Sydney Shen (2019), and Ahaad Alamoudi (2019), and has assisted on exhibitions by artists including Peter Saul, Daiga Grantina, Hans Haacke, Lubaina Himid, Marta Minujín, Nari Ward, Sarah Lucas, Thomas Bayrle, and John Akomfrah. She has curated exhibitions independently at The Carillon Gallery, Tarrant Community College South Campus, Fort Worth, Texas (2019), LADRÓNgalería, México City, México (2017), and The Government Art Collection, London, UK (2016). She has also contributed to the group exhibitions “The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement” (Phillips Collection, Washington DC), “The Same River Twice: Contemporary Art in Athens” (Benaki Museum, Athens), “Strange Days: Memories of the Future” (The Store X, London), and the 2018 New Museum Triennial: “Songs for Sabotage.” She proudly served as Delegate for the New Museum Union—UAW Local 2110, which formed in January 2019. Altamura holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Lizaveta Matveeva is an independent curator living in St. Petersburg, Russia. She recently curated "I don't know whether the Earth is spinning or not...", with Francesca Altamura, one of the Main Projects of the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. The digital exhibition is on view at notspinning.world. In 2021, they will curate a group exhibition together at Haus N, Athens, Greece. She works as Project Manager in the internationally renowned organization CEC ArtsLink which encourages multi-cultural collaborations between former Soviet Republics, Russia, and the United States. She co-curated exhibitions at the artist-run space LUDA gallery together with artist and curator Peter Belyi. Her recent shows include «Stranger Stories» at MYTH Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia (2019–20); «The Brotherhood the New Blockheads» at Mishkin Gallery, with Peter Belyi, at CUNY, New York, US (2019–20); «The Brotherhood the New Blockheads,» with Peter Belyi, at Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland (2019); «The whole world was not accessible to my gaze,» with Francesca Altamura, at The Carillon Gallery, Tarrant Community College, South Campus, Fort Worth, TX, US (2019); and «Frozen» at Start Space, Winzavod, Moscow (2019). She has advised the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York about the contemporary art scene in St. Petersburg. She also curates SAM Fair at the Museum of Street Art, St. Petersburg. Matveeva holds an MA in Curatorial Studies and Art Criticism from CCS, Bard College, and Smolny College, St. Petersburg State University.
The Moscow International Biennale for Young Art is one of the most prestigious projects in therealm of contemporary art in Russia, and is under the new direction of Commissioner AlexeyNovolesov. The Biennale’s goals are to draw attention to new talent on a global level, to fosterand encourage creative initiatives from a younger generation of artists and curators, and todevelop the Russian art scene.
