The exhibition "Mesocosm" opened at the Nizhny Novgorod cultural center "Record".

      The exhibition is organized as part of the ARTiKUL creative projects festival, which will take place from November 5 to 8.

      A "Mesocosm" exhibition opened at the Rekord Cultural Center in Nizhny Novgorod, organized as part of the ARTiKUL creative projects festival. This year it will take place at the Rekord venue from November 5 to 8 and will be dedicated to the theme of ecology, the Ministry of Culture of the Nizhny Novgorod Region reports.

      The exhibition features works by Nizhny Novgorod artist Kira Shilina and Elena Pavlova from Ryazan. Mesocosm is a world accessible to our bodily perception, a space between the microworld and the planetary macro-scale. It is also a modeled ecosystem—a closed environment, like a terrarium or greenhouse, in which complex processes can be observed in simplified form. The "Mesocosm" exhibition invites reflection on the limits of perception of the system of which we are a part.

      Artist Kira Shilina investigates the Volga’s coastal zone, where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial are increasingly blurred: technologies, animals, plants and people interweave into hybrid networks. In this space strange heterogeneous objects appear—fishing weights made from natural and technogenic materials, plastics resembling fossilized remains.

      "For the exhibition we sought to touch upon those layers of reality that are inaccessible in everyday life. The project begins with the 'Shallow Waters' series. These canvases preserve the imprints of what we normally notice in the coastal zone. We walked along the Rowing Canal and observed how algae, bags, ropes—all of it weaves into a single organism. These images were captured as imprints on the canvases. The canvases have another layer, invisible in daylight. If we turn off the lights, it will appear: in places the canvases glow in the dark, hinting at the existence of another world normally inaccessible to our perception," explains artist Kira Shilina.

      Kira Shilina builds a relationship with the canvas akin to the interaction between a force of nature and a human, working in co-authorship with water and foam. For example, the exhibition includes a series of fading paintings using spirulina powder as a green pigment.

      Ryazan artist Elena Pavlova is inspired by ideas of the interdependence of all things on Earth, which she contrasts with a value system centered on the human.

      "It all began with a story I once heard about the demise of the Aral Sea and the fish that lived in it. The Aral Sea was dying because of the huge amount of chemicals dumped into the rivers that irrigated cotton fields. The fish living in the sea began to disappear because their livers thinned, turning into a thin film. Without livers the fish could not survive in those conditions. I thought that the same poisonous substances affect us. We ourselves are thinning, sometimes without even noticing. This is happening in part due to harmful emissions, which sometimes seem impossible to stop, especially in industrial cities where the pollution problem is acute. Alongside my works, the exhibition also displays found objects. These are not merely artifacts; they are works of art created by nature itself in its interaction with plastic. My objects are 'symbiotes' embodying reflections on a new nature, on a reality that we sometimes fail to notice while living in it," said artist Elena Pavlova.

      Among the artist’s works are translucent breathing masks made from silk and toxic epoxy resin. Invisible, long-term changes produce abstract images at the junctions of the natural and the technogenic, of past and future. These hybrids coalesce into a series of chimera objects, multiply in the paintings, and are brought to hyperbolized scales so as not to slip from view.

      The "Mesocosm" exhibition by Kira Shilina and Elena Pavlova can be visited at the Rekord Cultural Center until November 16. Admission is free.

      Age restriction: 12+

      More news about the event:

      "Mesocosm" exhibition opened at the Rekord Cultural Center in Nizhny Novgorod

      Photo: Government of the Nizhny Novgorod Region

      The "Mesocosm" exhibition (6+) opened at the Rekord Cultural Center in Nizhny Novgorod, organized as part of the ARTiKUL festival (6+). 11:50 19.10.2025 Online edition Zhivem v Nizhnem - Nizhny Novgorod

      "Mesocosm" exhibition opened at the Rekord Cultural Center in Nizhny Novgorod

      The exhibition is organized as part of the ARTiKUL creative projects festival, which will take place from November 5 to 8. 10:26 19.10.2025 Vremya N - Nizhny Novgorod