Yevgeniy Fiks's Wayland Rudd Collection Examines Soviet Racial Imagery Through Parafictional Archive
Yevgeniy Fiks, an artist, elaborates on The Wayland Rudd Collection, a conceptual art initiative featuring over 300 digitized images from the Soviet era depicting Africans and African Americans, spanning the years 1920 to 1980. Launched in Summer 2010 after Fiks encountered an essay by Lily Wiatrowski Phillips about W. E. B. Du Bois, this project builds on his previous artistic endeavors. Named in honor of Wayland Rudd, an African-American actor who resided in the Soviet Union from 1932 until his passing in 1952, the collection functions as a parafictional archive rooted in historical inquiry. It explores issues such as racial stereotyping and proletarian internationalism. Contemporary works were showcased at Winkleman Gallery in Spring 2014 and First Floor Gallery in Harare, with a book released by Ugly Duckling Presse in late 2020.
Key facts
- The Wayland Rudd Collection is a conceptual art project by Yevgeniy Fiks started in Summer 2010.
- It contains over 300 digitized Soviet-era images of Africans and African Americans from the 1920s to 1980s.
- The project is named after African-American actor Wayland Rudd, who moved to the USSR in 1932 and died there in 1952.
- Contemporary artists like Ivan Brazhkin and Dread Scott intervened in the collection, with exhibitions in New York in 2014 and Harare in 2014.
- A book on the project was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in late 2020.
- Images include propaganda posters by artists such as Gustav Klutsis and Viktor Koretsky.
- The collection reveals themes like racial stereotyping in Soviet propaganda and the depoliticization of visual culture in the 1970s.
- Fiks aims to highlight the Soviet Union's anti-racism stance while acknowledging its human rights abuses.
Entities
Artists
- Yevgeniy Fiks
- Wayland Rudd
- Lily Wiatrowski Phillips
- W. E. B. Du Bois
- Langston Hughes
- Paul Robeson
- E. Artsrunyan
- Gustav Klutsis
- Viktor Koretsky
- Yevegeny Abezgus
- Viktor Borisovich Koretsky
- Patrice Lumumba
- Ivan Brazhkin
- Maria Buyondo
- Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya
- Gluklya
- Dread Scott
- Haim Sokol
- Tito Romalio
- Alexander Pushkin
- Aleksandr Deineka
- Raquel Greene
- Maxim Matusevich
- Christina Kiaer
- Jonathan Shandell
- Ksenia Nouril
- Carrie Lambert-Beatty
- Robert Robinson
- V. Karakashev
Institutions
- Ugly Duckling Presse
- Winkleman Gallery
- First Floor Gallery
- Russian State Film and Photo Archive
- Ne boltai! Collection
- Communist Party USA
- V. Meyerhold’s Theater
- ARTMargins Online
- October
Locations
- Soviet Union
- United States
- New York
- Manhattan
- Moscow
- Russia
- Harare
- Zimbabwe
- St. Petersburg
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Africa
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Czechoslovakia
- Hungary
- Poland