Survivalist, traveller, writer and artist
Alexander Ponomarev exhibited his installation CONCORDIA in the Antarctic Pavilion. The basis for this project was the idea of Salvation, as developed by the artist for many years, and of Concordia between people and nations.
Practicing artist, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE
Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Art historian, ex-director of The Pompidou Centre
PhD in Geography, deputy director of the Institute of Oceanology (Russian Academy of Sciences) for Expeditions and Fleet
Architect, Member of the Union of Architects of Russia, author of about 15 implemented architectural objects, owner of 4 patents for technical inventions.
Curator of exhibition projects; director of ProLab, Mosfilm Gallery ArtPlatform, and ArtPoint 21 visual communications agency
For many artists, museums, reputable institutions and all those who ponder over the essence of reality, The Antarctic Biennale is an opportunity to create something new, amazing and transforming, and the most important thing is that this transformation may change us as well.
The Antarctic Biennale Vision Building session
The exhibition of the open-call finalists
The announcement of the open-call finalists during Frieze Art Fair
Project and Production Manager
Press conference about the results of the expedition
Start of the 1st Antarctic Biennale Expedition
The open-call winner announcement during Art Basel Miami
Alexander Ponomarev’s Exhibition at Setouchi Triennale, presentation of the project
Antarctic Biennale Vision Club Panel discussion at CosMoscow Fair
Weekend with the Antarctic Biennale
The Antarctic Biennale presentation to the Spanish scientific and business societies, video screening of the ANTARCTICA: RE-CYCLICAL with comments by Hani Rashid
Opening of the exhibition ANTARCTICA: RE-CYCLICAL a frontier in flux at The Antarctic Pavilion
Anna Shvets
the 1st Antarctic Biennale Producer
Email: producer@antarcticbiennale.com
Email: pr@antarcticbiennale.com
Email: info@antarcticbiennale.com
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Alexander was born in Dnepropetrovsk (USSR, Ukraine) in 1957. In 1979, he graduated from the Odessa Higher Engineering Marine School. Worked as a naval officer on submarines and ships. After that he devoted himself to art.
Over 30 years, he has organized more than 100 artistic projects, exhibitions, and events. His projects have taken place in some of the world’s most remote oceans, the Arctic, the Antarctica and the Sahara desert.
In 2014, with support of the AVC Charity Foundation, Alexander Ponomarev established the first supranational pavilion — The Antarctic Pavilion — in Venice.
Ponomarev’s artworks are in the permanent collections of the Louvre Museum (France), the New National Museum of Monaco, the National Museum of Contemporary Art Georges Pompidou (France), Zimmerli Museum (USA), the National Museum of Singapore, the Louise T Blouin Foundation (Great Britain), the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Grand Duke (Luxembourg), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Russia), the State Russian Museum (Russia), etc.
ABVC coordinator
ANTARCTICA: RE-CYCLICAL a frontier in flux, an exhibition by Hani Rashid and his studio in the IoA University of Applied Arts Vienna. The results of this architectural research offer a new form of architecture, planning, thinking and creating new cities in Antarctica in distant future.
Head of PR and Communications
The art expedition has started in Ushuaia, the southernmost city of our planet, where approximately 100 participants have boarded the Akademik Sergey Vavilov research ship.
Alexander Ponomarev says that for this hundred the journey is ‘a revolution that changes the vector.
‘Instead of the usual national pavilions — the icy inaccessibility of the Antarctic continent. Instead of pompous apartments — ascetic cabins. Instead of the chaotic creative wanderings —a conjunction with the Great Nature and explosion of consciousness through the dialogues with scientists, futurists, and technological visionaries.’
Each passenger had a chance to take part in discussions, poetry, and philosophy workshops as well as to start designing the future in the Antarctic Biennale Vision club.
But the most important thing is that each expedition member have been an eyewitness and contributor to the art-making process.
The Antarctica is a very strong scenario". Russian artist Alexander Ponomarev drives a biennale of art at the South Pole.
The architect Hani Rashid has indicated that Antarctica is the last stop of the ’Spaceship’ Earth, and that this expedition is a mission to obtain cultural and scientific data that will help us understand this last stop.
The Antarctic Biennale indicated the search for ’encouraging collaboration among people in the field of science, art or philosophy so that they can build new concepts and a new form of collaboration between human beings’.
The 1th Antarctic Biennale is a supranational and intercultural project, which during ten days (from 27 March to 3 April 2017), will explore the future of this continent and its oceans.
We are building a unique community of people who are interested in reimagining the future of shared spaces, beginning with Antarctic culture as a model for global development. With the artistic core, we are creating the platform for the interdisciplinary dialogue.
I invite you to board my ship
And set out on an adventure
To the new shores of art!
I am organizing
A topsy-turvy biennale
An upside-down biennale,
A head-over-heels biennale,
A mobile biennale,
In the Antarctica
Close to the South Pole.
Mobilis in mobile!
The Antarctic Pavilion opened with the exhibition ANTARCTOPIA. It featured 15 world-famous architects, including Zaha Hadid, Hugh Broughton, Alexey Kozyr, and others, and showcased both speculative and realistic architectural projects for Antarctica. In 2015, the project was presented in the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow.
Established in 2014 as an international interface of the Antarctic Biennale (with the support of the AVC Charity Foundation), the Antarctic Pavilion is the first ever supranational pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
There will be a mix of globally celebrated names and avant-garde young voices.
The expedition will visit numerous working scientific bases in Antarctica, as well as historic and natural sites. Throughout the biennale, there will be actions, performances, and debates on board the expedition vessel, the research ship Akademik Sergey Vavilov, which is conceived as a floating studio, conference and exhibition space.
In addition, during landings at various Antarctic locations, artists will temporarily install works of art, or engage in performances.
Mobility, site specificity, ecological compatibility, artistic expressiveness and conceptual acuity will condition these interventions. All installations created during the expedition will be dismantled and loaded back on the ship, for their lives to continue in the world’s leading museums and art centers.
Some of the works of art will form the Antarctic Biennale collection.