Brick of my soul: notes by Mayakovsky, Dante Pokadrovo and Rodchenko at a gas station

""""""""""" Selected works by contemporary art star Roger Ballen, including the premiere of the new project "Inferno" based on Dante's "Divine Comedy", Rodchenko's photo collages for Mayakovsky's poem "About This", posters and fragments from films dedicated to Lila Brik: the XVI International "Photobiennale‑2026" opens at MAMM on September 23. This year's event is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the museum and the 200th anniversary of photography. "Izvestia" appreciated the exhibition among the first viewers.

The world stage

"Photobiennale 2026" occupied all seven floors of MAMM on Ostozhenka. On September 23, visitors will travel through the epochs: from the brutalist "giants" of Jan Schlegel to Rodchenko's photo collages, from Roger Ballen's Dante's hell to silent film posters, from Mayakovsky's intimate notes to Lila Brik to her photo shoot with a foreign car. This is a logical continuation of the museum's tradition. The first biennale was held in the spring of 1996.

— 30 years ago, I was 43 years old, and I understood that if you do a big international project, you will have to pay for it, — Olga Sviblova, director of MAMM, recalled. — And it's not a budget at all — it's life and blood. But it turned out that life does not rest on one soul. This is actually happiness — it opens up on the way. And we did it.

The most anticipated exhibition is the "Theater of the Subconscious" by Roger Ballen, one of the main photographers of the second half of the 20th century, participant of the 59th Venice Biennale. His works are kept at MoMA, the Pompidou Center and the Victoria and Albert Museum. "Inferno" (2025), based on Dante's "Divine Comedy", is also hosting the Russian premiere here: ghostly figures play out a bizarre shadow theater.

"I'm not illustrating Dante, I'm arguing with him,— Ballen says. — His hell is a map of human fears, and I translate it into the language of images, where each silhouette is a hint, and the void between them is the main statement. My task is to make the viewer feel the chill of this journey, even if they have never opened the book.

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A joint project of the AZ Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery combined the works of Sixties sculptors and complemented them with music.

The next floor is another planet. German photographer Jan Schlegel shows new episodes from 2024-2026 in the project "About Aliens, mermaids and jellyfish". "Silent Giants" are monumental brutalist buildings that have been removed so that the concrete looks like a sculpture. And jellyfish, whose secret life is usually invisible to the eye.

—Silent giants made of concrete and glass exist on a city scale, they overwhelm and fascinate with their mass," explains Schlegel. — And jellyfish remind of fragility: their forms are fluid, almost ghostly. I wanted to show two poles — what man builds, and what nature creates without us. Both have their own silence, which the camera is trying to hear.

""Schlegel has another series, ""The Last of its Kind": still lifes with flowers in various stages of fading, shot on an 8×10 Polaroid film, the production of which ceased in 2008. Its shelf life has expired a long time ago, and after developing, random color shifts and streaks appear on the prints — chemical reactions in the emulsion make each picture as unique as the flowers imprinted on it.

The photographer Alexandra Katyer, winner of the Prix Niépce in 2026, defends the value of film and hand printing. Her series "Behind glass" — portraits of bus passengers, printed on translucent tracing paper. This is a poignant series of people looking at the world through the windows of public transport.

"This is the bus I used to go to school on when I was a kid," says Katyer. — I returned to Minsk after a long absence with the desire to shoot something, but the planned did not come out. And then I came across these glances through the glass and realized what I wanted. The episode was made just a week before departure: in the evening I developed the film in the bathroom, and the next day I returned to the bus stop.

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Lilya Brik, Mayakovsky and a bulldog named Muzhik

"Lilya Brik: an icon of style and muse of the avant—garde" is dedicated to a woman who became the main face and visual symbol of Soviet constructivism. The exhibition clearly proves that Brick was not just an inspirer of poets, but an independent artist and the main ideologist of the new style. Photographs from the 1910s and 1970s, Rodchenko's photo collages for the poem "About It", posters and film fragments form a portrait of a woman who constructed her own myth — and the myth of the era around her.

In the summer of 1920, Mayakovsky and Brik picked up a puppy. The poet named him Pup. And he began to call himself the same. And Lilya got the nickname Kitty, she had a seal with a kitty. Instead of a signature, Mayakovsky depicted a puppy — from a schematic sketch to a full-fledged illustration. The exhibition features several hand-drawn letters. "I kiss" or "Kitty labors two-day result / Filly lapdog bunny and Great Dane." That's it, without punctuation marks.

Lilya Brik turned her style into a personal manifesto. Dresses by Nadezhda Lamanova, new items from Paris by Elsa Triolet's sister. In 1928, she asked Mayakovsky to bring "Renault" from France and became one of the first women in the country to get behind the wheel. Rodchenko's photo series "The Failed Journey" is about a failed trip in a new car from Moscow to Leningrad: the road turned out to be too bad.

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Alexandra Uryasova and Polina Teyrass will take part in the international Art Shopping Paris fair

An unexpected plot is friendship with Yves Saint Laurent. In 1975, in the Sheremetyevo transit hall, the couturier was struck by the elegance of 84‑year-old Lily in a green mink fur coat from Dior. Saint Laurent made dresses for her, invited her to his shows. Lilya, in her ironic way, called the designer's first bulldog, a puppy with long paws and irrepressible energy, "the man." The couturier liked the word so much that he kept it for all his dogs.: That's how Men I, II, III and IV appeared. Andy Warhol painted a portrait of one of them.

The exhibition features a cinema hall where silent films are shown accompanied by tap dancers, just as they were 100 years ago. A separate section is devoted to photomontage in a film poster: works of various genres are presented here — from spy thrillers to satirical paintings. An educational program with the participation of film critics and film historians complements the exhibition with stories about the history of the poster and its connection with cinema. The exhibition at MAMM will last until November 29.