Collective Threads: Anna Andreeva at the Red Rose Silk Factory
December 8, 2024 - April 27, 2025WORLD’S FIRST RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
A fully detailed and documented retrospective-exhibition on the work and life of Anna Andreeva (1917-2008), the Soviet textile designer who worked in the design collective at the Red Rose Silk Factory in Moscow from the 1940s to the 1980s, is the core narration line of the upcoming exhibition under the title “Collective Threads: Anna Andreeva at the Red Rose Silk Factory”.
Named after the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, the Red Rose Silk Factory was a site of collective female design labor that shaped the fashion and material culture of late Socialism. The exhibition showcases the abstract, geometric, cosmic, space-age, and cybernetic patterns of Andreeva, highlighting her as an individual talent whose inventiveness often soared above the work of her comrades, and who sometimes had to find ways to elude the censoring glare of Party authorities. At the same time, the exhibition spotlights Andreeva as a successful and enthusiastic participant in the planned economy of Soviet Union during the Cold War, also displaying designs that reflected the demands of the planned economy for popular, traditional and patriotic themes, and works made for state commissions to commemorate historic events, such as cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight in 1961 and the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.
The exhibition includes Andreeva’s drawings, sketches, and historic fabric samples, as well as photographs, film clips and other documentary materials from the Red Rose Factory collective, Soviet fashion magazines and exhibitions. It is complemented by large-scale contemporary reproductions of Andreeva’s textiles that viewers are invited to touch.
The exhibition presents Andreeva's work in dialogue with the Russian avant-garde from the Costakis collection of MOMus-Museum of Modern Art. It includes a number of textile designs from the 1920s, as well as works of art that inspired industrial design in the early Soviet years, which were preserved thanks to the tireless efforts of collector George Costakis.
The exhibition contributes to the recent intensive interest in textile and fiber art in multiple exhibitions (like “Unravel” at the Barbican 2024 and “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction,” which will end its current tour at MoMA in 2025) by continuing the feminist emphasis on woman makers but shifting the focus from handmade craft like weaving, embroidery and quilting, and its purported femininity, to a different model of industrial-scale textile production deliberately organised along collective lines within the Communist system.
An accompanying catalogue (publ. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich) with historical and theoretical essays by scholars, curators and critics, also emphasises on the collective process of the industrial production of textiles.
Curated by: Christina Kiaer, expert in Soviet art history, Professor of Art History, Northwestern University, USA
Assistant Curator: Angeliki Charistou, Art historian, MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection
In collaboration with: Anna Andreeva Estate (Basel), Layr Gallery (Vienna)
Exhibition Support: Kristina Krasnyanskaya
Catalogue Support: Konstantin and Victoria Yanakov
SAVE THE DATES
12:00-14:00 One-day conference and preview visit to the exhibition.
Speakers:
Christina Kiaer – Professor of Art History, Northwestern University, USA, Curator of the exhibition
Anna Dumont – Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome
Evangelos Kotsioris – Assistant Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA, New York
Julia Tulovsky – Curator at the Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, USA
Xenia Vytuleva-Herz – Anna Andreeva Estate (Basel)
Moderator:
Maria Tsantsanoglou – Artistic Director of MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection.
*The talks will be in English, without translation in Greek.
Sunday 8 December 2024
10:00-18:00 / Admission free for the public.
Accommodation Supporter MOMus
