GRAD and Pushkin House are proud to present Mother Tongue/ Родная Речь, the first London solo exhibition by New York-based Russian artist Yevgeniy Fiks, exploring historical gay Russian argot or slang. This coded language dates back to Soviet times and can be compared to Britain's polari, the jargon used in the past by gay and other subcultures.
The panel focused on historical gay Russian argot – the theme of this exhibition. This coded language dates back to Soviet times and can be compared to Britain's 'polari' jargon.
Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in New York since 1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: 'Lenin for Your Library?' in which he mailed V.I. Lenin's text "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" to one hundred global corporations as a donation for their corporate libraries; 'Communist Party USA', a series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA, painted from life in the Party's national headquarters in New York City; and 'Communist Guide to New York City', a series of photographs of buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the history of the American Communist movement. Fiks' work has been shown internationally. This includes exhibitions in the United States at Winkleman and Postmasters galleries (both in New York) Mass MoCA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, and the Museu Colecção Berardo in Lisbon. His work has been included in the Biennale of Sydney (2008), Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011), and Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015).