The Ultramute of the Twelve Languages, a solo exhibition by Aleksei Taruts, was on at szena, Moscow, running December 17 to February 23.
With mixed-media installation and video, the show examines Moscow’s Triumphal Arch — exploring its commemoration of the Russian defeat of Napoleon’s France, as well as its 19th century fabrication and reconstruction in the ‘60s — to unpack complex histories of militarism, architectural semiotics and European mythologies. As Andrey Shental comments in the exhibition’s catalogue text: “Like the very victory itself, which still remains contested, the history of this monument is comprised of a series of ambivalent reconstructions, dislocations, and displacements of meaning.”**