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Urban art festival which has been held in Neftekamsk throughout 2020 season is the only festival in Russia held during the global lockdown. Art-embassy Supernova curates the festival. It is organized by the Public Utilities Ministry of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Culture Ministry of the Republic of Bashkortostan and Municipality of Neftekamsk. Iskra Urban Fest is being held since April and will last until September 2020. It includes several formats such as mural art, street art, graffiti and land art as well as partisan offline/online activations and free painting. Up to date, two stages of the festival have been implemented, namely Memorial 2020 dedicated to the Victory Day and Mural Art (part I) on facades of residential buildings and technical constructions.
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Marat Morik, Rustam Qbic, Basil LST, Roman Muratkin, Anatoly Akue, Shozy, Issue, Artyom Stefanov (STFNV), Kirill Ashesteen, Evgeny Pacer Voronin, Alex Stan Shimanov, Kostya Zmogk, Effect Graff team (Jozi, Maiz, Olifa, Reset) participated in the first two stages of the festival.
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P R O J E C T C O N C E P T
The term urban art comprises all contemporary art practices such as graffiti, street art, mural art, performances and many others. Generally, it is any activity in a city aimed at monologue or a dialogue with urban residents, culture adepts and the whole community. Seven-pointed ‘spark’ (‘iskra’ in Russian) is the element of the town’s emblem referring to the ancestors. Within the festival format these are bright works, emotions, atmosphere created by street artists and town residents while interacting with urban spaces. A spark is an initiative able to fuel the interest of several generations to street art phenomenon. As an initiative it can change the town’s lifestyle to the better. The key idea of the festival is to ignite the first spark to support active groups of residents in positive changes in environment and development of creative thinking. This is the investment in intangible assets of the town able to show itself in short term perspective as well as later.
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P H O T O S B Y V I T A L Y K I M & D M I T R Y K U D I N O V
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Artyom Stefanov (STFNV) is a mural artist and graphic designer from Moscow, he is also a curator of exhibitions projects. He is an ex-member of ZUKCLUB art group with which he participated in more than 30 Russian and international street art festivals. Since 2015, he has been actively collaborating with ARMA17 club. His area of expertise is large scale street work with expressed optical effects. The specific features of his visual language are combination of forms and objects of the real world, like houses or fences, having specific reliefs with digital aesthetics: glitch, forms morphing and optical illusions.
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One of the key features of Artyom’s work is to break the space, to see what happens to the building architecture if it becomes a cinematic surface. In this work, the painting is connected to the size of façade tiles. The surface seems to pulse as it is viewed by spectators.
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A spectator represents the fourth element in 3-dimensional static space. It is the spectator who puts the plot together to create an integral picture, and it comes to life in spectator’s perception.
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