2021
2022
2023
2024
RU
Here
& Now
& Now
Moscow
’25
Here
& Now
& Now
Moscow
’25
CONTEMPORARY
ART ON CITY
STREETS
ART ON CITY
STREETS
Here and Now, the contemporary art show held annually in Moscow, is celebrating its 6th edition in 2024. For the fourth time in a row, it is happening outdoors. The exhibited works of art integrate seamlessly into the urban landscape, bringing contemporary art closer to city residents.
The current edition is hosted by the Skolkovo Innovation Center, with the entire cast of exhibits installed within a single location. Prompted by the genius loci, the festival explores connections between science and art as its keynote idea. Being Russia’s largest innovation hub today, Skolkovo plays a major part in providing a solid foundation for the national economy. It supports numerous startups in growing businesses focused on supplying domestically made technology-intensive products for the manufacturing industry, healthcare, transportation, IT, and other applications.
Together, Zaryadye Park the operator and Skolkovo Innovation Center the host of the Here and Now festival have developed an art trail linking nearly two dozen artworks on show. As in the previous year, the festival features artists coming from a broad geography across Russia, including Moscow. Alongside objects of art and murals premiering in this exhibition, the selection includes works by five participants of the festival’s earlier editions. The choice of locations for showcasing art on the grounds of Skolkovo naturally gravitated towards community anchor points, such as parks and gardens, main streets and boulevards, campuses and outdoor areas of office buildings.
The current edition is hosted by the Skolkovo Innovation Center, with the entire cast of exhibits installed within a single location. Prompted by the genius loci, the festival explores connections between science and art as its keynote idea. Being Russia’s largest innovation hub today, Skolkovo plays a major part in providing a solid foundation for the national economy. It supports numerous startups in growing businesses focused on supplying domestically made technology-intensive products for the manufacturing industry, healthcare, transportation, IT, and other applications.
Together, Zaryadye Park the operator and Skolkovo Innovation Center the host of the Here and Now festival have developed an art trail linking nearly two dozen artworks on show. As in the previous year, the festival features artists coming from a broad geography across Russia, including Moscow. Alongside objects of art and murals premiering in this exhibition, the selection includes works by five participants of the festival’s earlier editions. The choice of locations for showcasing art on the grounds of Skolkovo naturally gravitated towards community anchor points, such as parks and gardens, main streets and boulevards, campuses and outdoor areas of office buildings.
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Рroject Objectives
Stimulation of the cultural and social dynamics of urban public spaces while engaging city residents in an exploration of Russian history and culture
Support and encouragement for the development of Russia’s regional art scene
An international cultural exchange
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Support for young art
Decentralisation and activation of the cultural map of diverse areas while adding new and iconic urban attractions
Popularisation of contemporary art as an integral part of the urban landscape
Objects
(art object recreated in 2025)
Skolkovo Innovation Centre, Territory of the playground by the Milfei residential complex and the Skolkovo International Gymnasium
Skolkovo Innovation Centre, Territory of the playground by the Milfei residential complex and the Skolkovo International Gymnasium
Alphabetians. ALPHABET GAME
Moscow, Russia
Diana Vouba
1
ABOUT THE ARTIST
ABOUT THE WORK
Some expressive concepts take a specific perspective to be fully embraced. This way, artists make their enshrouded worlds accessible to the ones who are willing to look deeper. As a home for her fictional race of Alphabetians, artist Diana Vouba envisioned an entire distant Planet An. She endowed those imaginary creatures with a power to transform their bodies in every dimension as well as generate multidimensional geometric objects. In her own take on the foundations of the Russian avant-garde, the artist brought her character designs to life as figures with human and animal-like features, painted in patterns of red, black, and white. Installed outside the International Gymnasium Skolkovo, they are made up from an alphabet of symbolic signs, open to countless combinations. Depending on the angle of observation, each Alphabetian shows a different look. Rather than simply watching, we are invited to dive into the mesmerizing experience they offer. Beyond what begins as an interplay of architectural forms, we are visibly drawn into the juxtaposing dynamic of call-and-response with the creators of other futuristic works of art on the grounds of the Skolkovo Innovation Center.
Diana Vouba speaks of herself as a hunter for new beauty, as someone with a mission of seeing the unseen and making it visible to others. A graduate of the Tbilisi State Academy of Art and the Creative Workshops of the USSR Academy of Arts, she debuted with a solo show in 1992, hosted by the Central House of Artists in Moscow. In 1996, Diana was acknowledged with a Gold Medal at the International Festival of Fine Arts in Mahrès, Sfax, Tunisia, for a portrait series of local noblemen. Four years later, her work was featured in the ‘Women in Art' group exhibition in Washington, D.C. In 2021, Diana Vouba was awarded the Zverev Art Prize, established in honor of artist Anatoly Zverev.
In 2015, inspired by the life-affirming ethos of the Russian avant-garde, Diana Vouba created The Alphabet City, an artist-made design set of 64 geometrical signs using the Golden Ratio. Her works are featured in the collections of the Russian Museum, the Russian Academy of Arts, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum, and the Anatoly Zverev Museum. Diana’s recognizable style boasts a vibrant palette contrasted by a reserved, minimalist composition. The passion for music she discovered early in life has permeated her art. It is vividly present in her geometrical abstract paintings with throbbing, almost animated shapes, as well as in The Dimension of Silence series, for which composer Iraida Yusupova notably created a musical score.
In 2015, inspired by the life-affirming ethos of the Russian avant-garde, Diana Vouba created The Alphabet City, an artist-made design set of 64 geometrical signs using the Golden Ratio. Her works are featured in the collections of the Russian Museum, the Russian Academy of Arts, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum, and the Anatoly Zverev Museum. Diana’s recognizable style boasts a vibrant palette contrasted by a reserved, minimalist composition. The passion for music she discovered early in life has permeated her art. It is vividly present in her geometrical abstract paintings with throbbing, almost animated shapes, as well as in The Dimension of Silence series, for which composer Iraida Yusupova notably created a musical score.
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Objects
Skolkovo Innovation Centre, ‘Healing Gardens’ of the International Medical Cluster
Moon Valley
(Vasily Timashev and Polina Pirogova)
Minsk, Republic of Belarus
ECHO creative workshop
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE WORK
Nature is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. It is an endless variety of forms, colours, textures, plasticity and phenomena that can serve as objects for depiction, and also as symbols to evoke an emotional and creative impulse. For sculptors Vasily Timashov and Polina Pirogova, nature is the starting point of coordinates in their own artistic system. And even the fundamental philosophical opposition of nature as a man-made environment and culture as a sphere created by man makes no appearance in the context of their work. Here, natural order prevails in everything: the relationship of sculptural objects with the landscape, an appeal to natural forms, and the use of natural materials. The authors celebrate beauty and harmony, striving to reflect the purity and conciseness of perception of the surrounding world and its influence on the inner world.
In the Technopark Garden opposite the Skolkovo International Gymnasium, ‘Moon Valley’, a new object from the Echo workshop, has been installed. This work illustrates the connection between inner worlds – the space where our consciousness is born and lives. “There, at night, in the moonlight, all the most secret things are concealed... Things known only to ourselves,” say the authors. In this sculpture, three balls woven from vines resemble either craters, or satellites, or the visible trajectory along which a certain celestial body proceeds. They precisely flow into each other, and, thanks to their combination, a unique living relationship is formed – growing and changing. The multifaceted perception of forms captivates our imagination and sets the mood for contemplation and reflection.
In the Technopark Garden opposite the Skolkovo International Gymnasium, ‘Moon Valley’, a new object from the Echo workshop, has been installed. This work illustrates the connection between inner worlds – the space where our consciousness is born and lives. “There, at night, in the moonlight, all the most secret things are concealed... Things known only to ourselves,” say the authors. In this sculpture, three balls woven from vines resemble either craters, or satellites, or the visible trajectory along which a certain celestial body proceeds. They precisely flow into each other, and, thanks to their combination, a unique living relationship is formed – growing and changing. The multifaceted perception of forms captivates our imagination and sets the mood for contemplation and reflection.
“Our voice is reflected in nature
and realised in our creativity.”
1–3
The Echo creative workshop is the union between artists Vasily Timashov and Polina Pirogova. The authors are originally from Novopolotsk (Republic of Belarus). Together they graduated from the art school in their hometown, the Ivan Akhremchik Art College, and from the sculpture department of the Art Faculty at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts.
Vasily and Polina actively study the properties of various materials, so among their projects there are many artistic experiments with stone, wood, sand, and even ice. But the most distinctive feature of their creative method is the use of wickerwork. Giving preference to natural components, the artists make their art objects attractive to the viewer in an olfactory and tactile sense. Inspired by natural forms, the authors are in constant search of their artistic language and stylisation.
The Echo workshop has participated in dozens of festivals, group exhibitions and plein air events in Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Brazil and South Korea, and their works feature in private collections worldwide.
Vasily and Polina actively study the properties of various materials, so among their projects there are many artistic experiments with stone, wood, sand, and even ice. But the most distinctive feature of their creative method is the use of wickerwork. Giving preference to natural components, the artists make their art objects attractive to the viewer in an olfactory and tactile sense. Inspired by natural forms, the authors are in constant search of their artistic language and stylisation.
The Echo workshop has participated in dozens of festivals, group exhibitions and plein air events in Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Brazil and South Korea, and their works feature in private collections worldwide.
Objects
Museum of Moscow
Simple Forms
Moscow, Russia
Asya Zaslavskaya,
Sofia Dobychina, Andrey Astakhov
Sofia Dobychina, Andrey Astakhov
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
ABOUT THE WORK
When devising the art object, the authors turned to game theory and the concept of games as a form of scientific knowledge, as a tool used to explore the world, develop, learn and shape a personality. People unconsciously play games every day, building their story brick by brick: they solve problems, interact with others, finish school, study at university, build a career, adapt to new conditions. We learn about the world through play. As we grow older only its form and name change, while the person remains the same.
The modular art installation ‘Simple Forms’ is a composition of basic geometric objects that in various combinations give rise to complex, unpredictable constructions. Cubes are about sustainable development, the interrelationships of key elements and strategy. This is a visualised game of structure and order, where the result depends on the interaction of all elements. Systems, laws and discoveries are made from single blocks of matter, ideas and numbers.
The modular art installation ‘Simple Forms’ is a composition of basic geometric objects that in various combinations give rise to complex, unpredictable constructions. Cubes are about sustainable development, the interrelationships of key elements and strategy. This is a visualised game of structure and order, where the result depends on the interaction of all elements. Systems, laws and discoveries are made from single blocks of matter, ideas and numbers.
Asya Zaslavskaya is a multidisciplinary artist who actively experiments with a wide variety of media: painting, installation, sculpture, embroidery and video. She studied at Mikhail Labazov’s architectural studio at DEZ No. 5 (2009–2015) before graduating from the restoration department of Polytechnic College No. 2 (2018) and MARСH, the Moscow School of Architecture (‘Architecture and Urbanism’, 2021). Currently she is a master’s student at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). She was also a resident of the Workshops and Art Residencies of the Garage Museum (Moscow, 2019–2020) and the Winzavod Workshops (Moscow, 2022–2024).
The artist has more than a dozen personal projects to her credit, among which she particularly notes: ‘One for One’ (Oktava creative cluster, Tula, 2023), ‘Nature of the Future’ (Solodovnya cultural centre, Moscow, 2024), ‘Time and Chance for Everyone’ (Gilyarovsky Centre, Museum of Moscow, 2024), and ‘Signs of Life’ (North Caucasian branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2025). Among the group projects Asya Zaslavskaya highlights her participation in the 2nd Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020) and the ARTMOSSPHERE Street Art Biennale (Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2023). In 2024 she took part in ‘Creating Miracles’, the first exhibition of Russian art in Dakar (Senegal, Africa). Asya Zaslavskaya’s works are in museum and private collections worldwide.
Andrey Astakhov is an architect. He graduated from MARСH, the Moscow School of Architecture (‘Architecture and Urbanism’, 2021). In 2020 he worked at the SAGA architectural bureau. Since 2021 he has specialised in collaboration with construction companies involved in the implementation of unique and complex projects. In 2022 he founded a startup developing generative IT solutions for complex problems in the field of architecture.
Sofia Dobychina is an architect and researcher. She studied at Vladislav Kirpichev’s Edas studio. Sofia graduated from the Moscow School of Architecture MARCH (‘Architecture and Urbanism’, 2021). She has collaborated with the KOSMOS Architects bureau.
Sofia is currently conducting her own architectural projects and developing a startup to create digital tools for architects, together with Andrey Astakhov. At the same time she is engaged in research activities: Dobychina is a participant in the Auditoria programme, as part of which her book ‘The Culture of Copies’ was published in 2025. In this Sofia rethinks the usual approaches to design and considers architecture as an active participant in cultural and social transformations.
The artist has more than a dozen personal projects to her credit, among which she particularly notes: ‘One for One’ (Oktava creative cluster, Tula, 2023), ‘Nature of the Future’ (Solodovnya cultural centre, Moscow, 2024), ‘Time and Chance for Everyone’ (Gilyarovsky Centre, Museum of Moscow, 2024), and ‘Signs of Life’ (North Caucasian branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2025). Among the group projects Asya Zaslavskaya highlights her participation in the 2nd Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020) and the ARTMOSSPHERE Street Art Biennale (Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2023). In 2024 she took part in ‘Creating Miracles’, the first exhibition of Russian art in Dakar (Senegal, Africa). Asya Zaslavskaya’s works are in museum and private collections worldwide.
Andrey Astakhov is an architect. He graduated from MARСH, the Moscow School of Architecture (‘Architecture and Urbanism’, 2021). In 2020 he worked at the SAGA architectural bureau. Since 2021 he has specialised in collaboration with construction companies involved in the implementation of unique and complex projects. In 2022 he founded a startup developing generative IT solutions for complex problems in the field of architecture.
Sofia Dobychina is an architect and researcher. She studied at Vladislav Kirpichev’s Edas studio. Sofia graduated from the Moscow School of Architecture MARCH (‘Architecture and Urbanism’, 2021). She has collaborated with the KOSMOS Architects bureau.
Sofia is currently conducting her own architectural projects and developing a startup to create digital tools for architects, together with Andrey Astakhov. At the same time she is engaged in research activities: Dobychina is a participant in the Auditoria programme, as part of which her book ‘The Culture of Copies’ was published in 2025. In this Sofia rethinks the usual approaches to design and considers architecture as an active participant in cultural and social transformations.
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05.09
Programme
SKOLKOVO INNOVATION CENTRE, CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUND ON BOLSHOY BOULEVARD
Authors: Asya Zaslavskaya, Sofia Dobychina, Andrey Astakhov
(Moscow, Russia)
Installation of the art object ‘Simple Forms’
Installation of the art object ‘Moon Valley’
Authors: ECHO creative workshop – Vasily Timashov and Polina Pirogova (Minsk, Republic of Belarus)
SKOLKOVO INNOVATION CENTRE, TECHNOPARK GARDEN
10.09
10.09–11.09
SKOLKOVO INNOVATION CENTRE, CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND TERRITORY NEAR THE MILFEI RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX AND SKOLKOVO INTERNATIONAL GYMNASIUM
Installation of the art object ‘Alphabetians. Alphabet Game’
Author: Diana Vouba (Moscow, Russia)
12.09. 2025 — 31.07. 2026
Russian House of Science and Culture in Berlin (Germany)
Participation of the festival ‘Here and Now’ in the exhibition ‘Public Art. Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Russlands’.
Curators: Anna Malik-Korolenkova and Roman Ermakov
Сurator
Anna Malik-Korolenkova
Curator, researcher, producer of exhibition projects in the field of contemporary art
Council of Experts
Director of the State Autonomous Cultural Institution of Moscow Zaryadye Park, General Director of the State Budgetary Cultural Institution of Moscow Museum and Exhibition Association Manege, Chairman of the Commission on Culture and Cultural-Historical Heritage of the Public Chamber of the City of Moscow
Ivan Demidov
Olga Galaktionova
Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Urbanist, sociologist, founder of CM International
Peter Kudryavtsev
Yulia Vasilenko
Head of the Department of Special Projects and Programmes for the Development of Young Art at MMOMA. Co-founder of the Artmossfera Street Art Biennale
General Director of the State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSIZO
ivan
lykoshin
lykoshin
Ivan Polissky
Managing Partner of the Nikola-Lenivets Art Park
Deputy Chairman of the Board at the Skolkovo Foundation for Public, Social and Educational Policy
Alexander Chernov
Dmitry Shishkin
Head of the Exhibition Projects Department at Zaryadye Park, State Autonomous Cultural Institution of the City of Moscow
Anna Trapkova
General Director of the Museum of Moscow Museum Association and the State Museum of GULAG History
Alexander Danilov
Deputy Head of the Exhibition Projects Department of the Zaryadye Park State Autonomous Cultural Institution of Moscow
Viktoria Chernega
Festival Manager, Exhibition Projects Department of the Zaryadye Park State Autonomous Cultural Institution of Moscow
Marfa Kemenchedzhi
Festival Manager, Exhibition Projects Department of the Zaryadye Park State Autonomous Cultural Institution of Moscow
Ksenia Faresova
General Director of the Accent creative communications agency
Anton Kirillov
Technical Director
Arina Puzikova
Producer
Vladislava Berezina
Producer
Dmitry Zimin
Designer
Anna Minkova
Lawyer
Anastasia Solovyova
Parallel Programme Organiser
Ksenia Marennikova
PR
crew
© ЗДЕСЬ И СЕЙЧАС 2024
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