Museum of artificial history, State Darwin Museum, Moscow (4 July — 12 September 2021) 

Museum of artificial history is a project in which works of modern art are exhibited in the space of the Darwin Museum on equal rights with natural science artifacts. 

The action of the exhibition takes place in the near future. The neural network «Zygote», designed to collect and process data on bioengineering and genetics, mistakenly attributed works of modern art to living beings. The artists suggest to look at the world of non-human beings, systematize them and imagine a non-existent museum. The exhibition features works by various mediums (sculpture, video art, graphics, installation, photography, performance), which together will make up the Museum of Artificial History.

The permanent exhibition of the Darwin Museum itself is a complex natural science installation. The Museum of artificial history is a rethinking of the idea of systematization and collecting of museum objects. This is a dialogue with the traditional exposition about the nature of the museum, classification and study of the surrounding world. The artists' works rhyme with the artifacts from the permanent collection of the Darwin Museum. Thus, the «Mask» of Maria Bogoraz becomes an object that Charles Darwin could have discovered during his journey; foxes literally look at the works of Ksenia Markelova; the installation by Sofa Skidan reproduces the atmosphere of the future (made of plastic and silicone) in front of a traditional diorama. 

The exhibition also features a dance performance by Dasha Sedova and Elina Zazulya. The cinema hall of the museum hosts screenings of video works by Miriam Simun and Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov. And especially for the exhibition Ilya shot a new short film right in the funds of the Darwin Museum. The parallel program also includes a master class of animation art, where children's drawings will be turned into a cartoon. 

The exhibition was implemented as part of the master's program «Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Art» of the Garage Museum of Modern Art and the Higher School of Economics.