Purple Travel
[December 11 2014]
All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh), Moscow
The All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh), originally built to celebrate the technological developments and agricultural achievements of the Soviet era, has since the dissolution of the USSR become a psychedelic flea market. The new life of small business conceived amid the dust and rotten flesh is now occupied in this sunken ship. The big and small “mystery plays” prospered here for twenty years among sharks, butterflies and relict fish. Today the All-Russian Exhibition Center faces a new phase of dynamic reconstruction and modernization – and soon yet another layer will bury this period of history and new cultural agents will take over the territory of the center. Some of the images were taken in the “Grain” Pavilion. The triumph of harvest, the fruition of undesirable plant life, collected from different districts of Moscow, and unfolded in the “Grain” Pavilion which was built for the opening of the All-Russian Exhibition Center in 1939. Under the district flags of the city, everyday examples of rampant plant life – common nettle, tarragon, pigweed, burdock, dandelion – invaded the space.
Text and photo Ekaterina Bazhenova
