The Blue Noses art group

Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov are two Russian artists who together formed the avant-garde group The Blue Noses. The group is known for an exploratory manner that blends social commentary, humour and performance.

Vyacheslav Mizin was born in 1962. He studied architecture at the Novosibirsk Engineering and Construction Institute and became one of the leaders of the “paper architects” movement in Novosibirsk. His first international appearance was at the 1st International Architecture Salon at La Villette in Paris in 1988. He began his artistic career in the early 1990s, working in graphics, video art and performance, and describes himself, half in jest, as a pseudo-avant-gardist. In the 2000s he also worked with other Novosibirsk groups.

Alexander Shaburov was born in 1965. He trained at the Sverdlovsk Art College and joined the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation. He is also a writer, a director and a producer, and teaches at the School of Design of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

The Blue Noses group was founded in 1999 in Novosibirsk, when Mizin and Shaburov brought their two practices together. They named their movement “Siberian ironic conceptualism”: video, photography and performance combined into work that is socially outspoken and often politically charged, satire delivered with humour that is by turns blunt and quiet. The duo's reputation grew sharply after 2003.

Their work has been shown at major international events, including the Venice Biennale and the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and is held in significant collections worldwide. Their bold handling of form and subject has often set off debate within the art community.

Vyacheslav Mizin received the national professional prize “Soratnik” in 2006. In 2018 he took part in the exhibition “Labour — Goal, Idea” at the State Centre for Contemporary Arts, opened a solo exhibition at the Novosibirsk State Museum of Local History, and was named by the magazine Artguide among the fifty most influential people in contemporary art. In recent years he has turned to curatorial work and has served as director and curator of the Siberian branch of the State Centre for Contemporary Arts.

Alexander Shaburov continues to work as an artist and cultural activist. He has presented the Kandinsky Prize and organised a number of art festivals, and has been awarded for his contribution to both art and literature. He is known for an ability to hold scandal and seriousness in the same gesture.

“We are artists engaged in what is called ‘contemporary art'. What that is, nobody knows — only I know… The division between ‘contemporary' and ‘non-contemporary' art is arbitrary. What matters is not the technology you use, but what you want to say.”

Alexander Shaburov