Exhibition "Family Business"

About exhibition

The Center for Contemporary Art’s first exhibition is devoted to exploring the concept of “family” from the perspective of transmitting experience from generation to generation. This is not an exhibition about gender relations nor a survey of the historical evolution of the family as an institution; rather, it is a field in which members of several Tula families share their experience of understanding their own family—what makes it a family and why a family is needed at all. It was important to find an aspect common to all the families that would allow them to be connected within a single field. That aspect is work. In all the selected families there is professional continuity. The conversation about it becomes the frame for discussing all other aspects of relationships within the family. Work is not only a profession; it is the family’s contribution to the outside world, its service. The reverse is also true: the family itself is also a “work” for which many other undertakings in this universe are set in motion. This is a story about Tula with a human face—not a city of factories and plants, weapons and samovars, but a city of people learning to understand themselves in that role.