ESPACE MVG presents the exhibition “Back in the USSR – The Artists of Perestroika,” which brings together a series of photographs taken by Michael von Graffenried in Moscow in the spring of 1988, on the threshold of a still uncertain turning point.
A few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, as Perestroika (“restructuring”) and Glasnost (“transparency”) were blowing a wind of reform into a faltering Soviet Union, Graffenried immersed himself in the margins of the Moscow art scene. In studios, and more rarely in public spaces, he met and photographed artists whose freedom of expression remained fragile despite the relaxation announced by Gorbachev. The series bears witness to the resistance of artists such as Erik Bulatov, Eduard Gorokhovsky, and Georgy Litichevsky, and their role in inventing a post-Soviet future. Some subverted the codes of socialist realism to reveal its flaws, while others, like Dmitri Prigov, explored new forms such as performances, ephemeral installations, and hidden works, sometimes risking their own freedom. Art was practiced in silence, on the margins, waiting for a public space to be reclaimed. Presented for the first time in Berlin in 1988–89 at the nGbK (neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst), and awarded a World Press Photo in 1989, this series documents a budding generation, which was already inventing other possible narratives, more open, free from a state aesthetic.
Michael von Graffenried: “Back in the USSR – The Artists of Perestroika”
From September 11 to December 13, 2025
ESPACE MVG
36 Rue Falguière,
75015 Paris
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 2 – 6 p.m.
www.mvgphoto.com
