Curated by Dimitri Ozerkov
“ACCENTS, ACCENTI, АКЦЕНТЫ” is the title of the project and the program of events develops for the Marino Marini by Dimitri Ozerkov, head of the department of Contemporary Art at the Russian State Hermitage Museum and of the project “Hermitage 20/21”.
One of the three events within the program is the exhibition Three Women, also curated by Dmitri Ozerkov. It is a conceptual exhibition in the Cappella Rucellai pertaining to three female figures from the bible – Judith, Jael, and Delilah and their roles in history, art and culture. It makes us reflect on the importance of the female figure across the history of humanity: strong, determined women who in shaping themselves become identity figures.
Three is the mythical multiple symbolising the feminine – in myths, in history, in art, in literature, in religions.
The Moirai or Fates, the Erinyes, the Hours, the Gorgons, the Graces, the Christian virtues, the triads of female figures described by Dante up to those by Shakespeare, up to the masterpiece of Anton Chekhov.
The title, intentionally generic in its indication, therefore wants to stimulate the imaginary on which one of the figures featured in the exhibition set up in the Rucellai Chapel – in the former Church of San Pancrazio, which used to be part of a female monastery – is centered.
In fact, all of these women are a single woman, a paradigmatic female figure in time and history.
Dimitri Ozerkov (1976, St. Petersburg), is an art historian, philosopher, and curator of numerous expositions of contemporary art in Russia and elsewhere. Since 2007 he has worked on the ambitious Hermitage 20/21 project for contemporary art, that aims to collect and exhibit Russian contemporary art. Also since 2007, the exhibition that he curated and that he became noted for in the Russian press – USA Today – a deliberately provocative collection of American contemporary artists with works coming from the Charles Saatchi gallery, is still being shown.
In 2011 he curated the homage to Dimitry Prigov for the 54th Venice Biennial and the he was the Commissioner of Manifesto X (2014), author of publications and articles on contemporary creation and the art of the XVIII century.
In 2017, he is among the curators of Glass and Bone Sculptures 1977-2017 by Jan Fabre, a selection of sculptures in bone glass produced by the Belgian artist over thirty years and the associated event at the 57th Biennial.
He has additionally curated the exhibition Futurins, a reflection of the significance and aesthetic of ruins from the past to the present, held at Palazzo Fortuny.