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Promzona

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Promzona (2015–2022)
BERJAYA
Entrance hall of the exhibition Promzona at Uppsala Art Museum. 2022
Art project by Pavel Otdelnov about chemical industry in Dzerzhinsk
LocationRussia and Sweden
CuratorDaria Kamyshnikova; Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson
OrganiserPavel Otdelnov
Websitewww.promzona.site/en

Promzona is a long-term art project by Pavel Otdelnov exploring the history and environmental legacy of the chemical industry in Dzerzhinsk, Russia.[1][2]

Project

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Promzona examines the post-industrial landscape of the chemical plants in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, one of the principal centres of the Soviet chemical industry established in the late 1930s. During different historical periods, local factories served both military and civilian purposes. During the Second World War, some enterprises produced chemical warfare agents, while in the post-war decades they manufactured products including fertilizers, herbicides, DDT insecticide, acrylic glass, caprolactam, acetone and other industrial chemicals. Following the privatization of the 1990s, many factories were declared unprofitable and closed, leading to their gradual abandonment and the emergence of a distinctive post-industrial landscape.[1] [3]

The project is rooted in the artist's family history. Three generations of Otdelnov's family worked at Dzerzhinsk's chemical plants, from the construction of the industrial complex in the 1930s to hazardous industrial production and managerial positions during the late Soviet period. Drawing on this personal connection, Promzona combines family archives, historical documents, photographs, oral testimonies and paintings to examine the relationship between individual memory and the broader history of Soviet industrialization. The project has been described as an artistic investigation in which microhistory is used to explore the social, environmental and historical consequences of the Soviet industrial project.[1][4][3]

The project was developed through extensive archival and field research. Otdelnov examined archival records and Soviet-era local newspapers, collected oral histories, consulted local historians and environmental specialists, and carried out fieldwork in the industrial zones of Dzerzhinsk and the former Voroshilovsky settlement. Combining painting, photography, video, installation, archival documents, texts and found objects, Promzona presents a multilayered exploration of the historical, social and environmental legacy of Soviet industrialization.[1][5][6]

Exhibition structure

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The exhibition is organised into six thematic sections: Museum, Traces, Wall of Fame, Ruins, Sand and Cinema. Together they trace the history of Dzerzhinsk's chemical industry from its origins and official narratives to industrial decline and its environmental and social consequences.[3][7][2]

Museum

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BERJAYA
Museum section. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2019

The Museum section recreates the format of a local history museum and establishes the historical framework for the exhibition. Based on Otdelnov's field research in the abandoned Voroshilovsky workers' settlement in Dzerzhinsk's Eastern Industrial Zone, it combines found objects, archival materials and multimedia installations documenting the history of the city's chemical industry.[3][5] Among the exhibits are lightboxes showing photomontages of the remains of workers' barracks, which also served as air-raid shelters, together with materials relating to German prisoners of war employed in the construction and operation of the chemical plants.[3][5]

A separate part is devoted to Otdelnov's correspondence with Claus Fritzsche (1923–2017), whose memoirs describe his imprisonment in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps, including those in Dzerzhinsk. The central installation is a floor projection of a satellite image of the White Sea sludge pit, which has stored chemical waste since 1973, together with a map identifying industrial plants and waste disposal sites, including the illegal Black Hole landfill.[1][5][3] The section also includes graphite electrodes formerly used in chlorine production and laboratory flasks containing preserved industrial odours, extending the exhibition's documentary and sensory dimension.[3][5][8]

Traces

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The Traces section comprises paintings derived from photographs published in factory newspapers between the 1950s and the 1980s, alongside found objects including fragments of Soviet civil-defence educational filmstrips.[1][3][9] The paintings are based on archival photographs of factory meetings, demonstrations, propaganda and reports on industrial accidents, and employ a halftone printing effect that deliberately reduces the clarity of the original images.[1][3][9]

The painting 12.02.60 is based on an unpublished archival photograph of the explosion caused by a gas leak at the Kaprolaktam plant on 12 February 1960, in which an entire shift of twenty-four workers was killed. The disaster was not reported in the Soviet press.[9][10][9][7]

Wall of Fame

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BERJAYA
Pavel Otdelnov. Wall of Fame. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2019

The Wall of Fame consists of a painted installation based on photographs of exemplary workers published in factory and local newspapers between the 1930s and the 1980s, including Dzerzhinets, Golos rabochego(The Worker's Voice), and Za doblestny trud (For Valiant Labour). It comprises thirty-seven monochrome portraits, including one of the artist's grandmother.[1][10] The installation traces changes in the visual representation of industrial workers from staged studio portraits of the 1930s to more informal workplace photography of the 1980s.[7][2] Discarded industrial gas masks recovered from the factory sites are displayed alongside the paintings.[3][5]

Ruins

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The Ruins section presents a series of large-scale paintings depicting abandoned factories and industrial interiors connected to the artist's family history. The works contain no human figures and instead treat industrial architecture as the principal subject.[1][3][11]

The series examines the decline of Dzerzhinsk's chemical industry and the legacy of Soviet industrialisation through images of abandoned industrial sites associated with the artist's family.[5][3][2] Critics have interpreted the absence of people as emphasising the relationship between industrial ruins, memory and historical loss.[3][11]

No Entry Without a Gas Mask!

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The No Entry Without a Gas Mask! display presents excerpts from the memoirs of Alexander Otdelnov, the artist's father, who worked in Dzerzhinsk's chemical industry from 1973 to 1986 and later became director of a cosmetics factory manufacturing products for Wella, Schwarzkopf and Procter & Gamble.[12] Written for the exhibition and later published as the book No Entry Without a Gas Mask!, the texts were reproduced directly on the gallery walls alongside the paintings in the Ruins section, introducing first-hand accounts of everyday life in the Soviet chemical industry.[3][13][14]

Sand

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BERJAYA
Pavel Otdelnov. Hazardous Area. 2018

The Sand section focuses on the contemporary condition of the city of Dzerzhinsk and its industrial zone. Several works examine the disappearance of the city's industrial infrastructure, including Rails (2018), which depicts the abandoned Dzerzhinsk tram before its tracks were dismantled.[7][3][5]

Other paintings address the environmental legacy of the chemical industry, including the illegal waste site known as the Black Hole and the simazine waste disposal facility established in 1976. The section concludes with a found object representing the long-term ecological effects of industrial pollution.[5][12][3]

Cinema

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The Cinema section presents films documenting the abandoned industrial landscape of Dzerzhinsk. The films Chemical Plant (2019) and From the White Sea to the Black Hole (2019), projected on opposing walls, use aerial footage to record derelict factories, industrial ruins and toxic waste sites. The soundtrack was composed by KtrnHerbst.[3][7][15]

Chemical Plant (2019, 19 min.) documents the abandoned factories of Dzerzhinsk through drone cinematography.[1][15]

From the White Sea to the Black Hole (2019, 19 min.) examines the city's principal sites of industrial pollution, including sludge pits and chemical waste deposits.[15][16]

BERJAYA
Pavel Otdelnov. Subjects of Memory. Film still. 2016

Subjects of Memory (2016, 30 min.) is based on interviews with members of the artist's family. Divided into three chapters—Settlement, Factory and Sludge—it explores the history of the Voroshilovsky workers' settlement, the decline of Dzerzhinsk's chemical industry and its environmental consequences.[3][1][15]

Reception

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Critics have noted that Promzona draws on a wide range of visual and literary references, including Socialist realism, classical history painting, Pop art, contemporary figurative painting, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and documentary literature. According to reviewers, the combination of these visual languages constructs an image of the abandoned industrial zone as a space suspended between a collapsed past and an unrealised future.[17][18][19][3][20][21][12]

Art historian Tatiana Mironova has described Promzona as an example of artistic research that approaches local history through personal and family memory. She argues that, by combining the format of a museum display with family archives, the project presents the history of place as an intersection of individual experience and broader political and historical processes.[22] In a separate review, however, Mironova criticised the exhibition for aestheticising industrial catastrophe and presenting the ruins of Soviet industry as objects of contemplation while giving limited attention to questions of responsibility, political conflict and the experiences of those directly affected.[23]

Ivan Streltsov and Vladimir Dudchenko have interpreted Promzona as a reflection on the failure of Soviet modernity. Streltsov argues that Otdelnov reworks the modernist motif of the grid, described by Rosalind Krauss as a symbol of artistic autonomy, by exposing it to the historical realities of industrial accidents, censorship and environmental degradation. Dudchenko similarly characterises "Otdelnov's Dzerzhinsk" as a "ruin of modernism" and an "alternative future that never came to pass", relating the project to the legacy of Alexander Rodchenko.[19][17][17]

Writing for Colta, Maksim Burov and Nadezhda Plungian argued that the exhibition avoids both postmodern irony and sentimental nostalgia, instead using documentary material and family testimony to examine the relationship between individual memory and the Soviet past without reducing it either to political statement or autobiographical narrative.[18]

Ekaterina Tarasova has interpreted Promzona as an example of reflective nostalgia, arguing that the project presents the Soviet industrial city as a utopian project remembered through the combined use of archival documents, photographs and artistic reconstruction, while questioning the possibility of an objective representation of the past.[24]

Exhibitions

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  • 2015 – Board of Honour, Stavropol Regional Museum of Fine Arts, Stavropol
  • 2016 – Territory of Accumulated Damage, Belyaevo Gallery, Moscow.
  • 2016 – White Sea. Black Hole, NCCA Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod
  • 2017 — Ruins, Victoria Gallery, Samara
  • 2017 – Board of Honour and Ruins, main project of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg[25]
  • 2018 – Chemical Plant, FUTURO Gallery, Nizhny Novgorod
  • 2019 – Promzona, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow[26]
  • 2020 – Promzona, Innovation Prize exhibition, Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod.[27][28]
  • 2021 – Promzona, Kandinsky Prize exhibition, Moscow Museum of Modern Art.[29]
  • 2022 – Promzona, Uppsala Art Museum, Uppsala, Sweden.[30][31]

Awards and nominations

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  • 2017 – Shortlisted for the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize (Best Visual Artwork) for White Sea. Black Hole.[32]
  • 2017 – Longlisted for the Kandinsky Prize (Project of the Year) for White Sea. Black Hole.[34]
  • 2020 – Winner of the Innovation Prize (Artist of the Year) for Promzona.[27][28]

Further reading

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  • Arutyunyan, Angela; Egorov, Alexey. "Personal Traces in the Soviet Industrial Aftermath". In Visual Culture of Post-Industrial Europe. Amsterdam University Press, 2024.[3]
  • Mille, Daria. "Trajectories of Modernization in Russia". In Critical Zones. MIT Press, 2020.[15]
  • Mironova, Tatiana. Optics of Documentary. New Literary Observer, 2025.[22]
  • Otdelnov, Pavel; Kamyshnikova, Daria; Zatsepin, Kirill. Promzona. Moscow: Triumph, 2019.[1]
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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Kamyshnikova, Daria; Otdelnov, Pavel; Zatsepin, Kirill (2019). Promzona. Pavel Otdelnov (PDF). Moscow: Triumph. p. 192. ISBN 978-5-6041668-8-8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-09-29. Retrieved 2026-07-21.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Otdelnov, P. A. (2019). "The Art Project "Promzona": Family History as Part of the History of a Country". Philosophical Letters. Russian and European Dialogue (2 (4)). Moscow: Higher School of Economics (HSE): 214–241. doi:10.17323/2658-5413-2019-2-4-214-241. ISSN 2658-5413. Archived from the original on 2025-04-11.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Arutyunyan, Anna; Egorov, Andrey (2024). "Personal Traces in the Soviet Industrial Aftermath: Pavel Otdelnov's Promzona and Haim Sokol's Paper Memory Exhibitions in Moscow. Visual Culture of Post-Industrial Europe". In Guerin (ed.). Personal Traces in the Soviet Industrial Aftermath: Pavel Otdelnov's Promzona and Haim Sokol's Paper Memory Exhibitions in Moscow (PDF). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 243–266. ISBN 978-90-4856-009-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 January 2025. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  4. ↑ de Pury, Kate (2020). "Pavel Otdelnov: future ruins". Art Focus Now. Archived from the original on 2026-01-13. Retrieved 2026-02-16.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kravchenko, Inna (2019-06-21). "After Us, a Mutant Will Live Here". Takiye Dela (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2025-07-09. Retrieved 2026-07-21.
  6. ↑ "Weekly schedule: Pavel Otdelnov. Promzona" (in Russian). Kommersant Weekend. 2019-02-01. Archived from the original on 2019-02-07. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Golovina, E. I. (2019). "Fragments of Memory: Pavel Otdelnov's Exhibition "Promzona"" (PDF). Stephanos (2 (34)). Project of the Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University: 45–53. doi:10.24249/2309-9917-2019-34-2-45-53. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-08-10.
  8. ↑ Otdelnov, P. A. (2025). "What Does an Industrial Zone Smell Like? The Olfactory Memory of an Industrial Past" (PDF). Vektory: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference of Young Scholars. Shaninka, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSEN). pp. 23–29. ISBN 978-5-6053489-4-8.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Kharitonova, A. M.; Sirenko, A. S. (2021). "Post Scriptum". Socialist Realism: Metamorphoses. Soviet Art 1927–1987. Moscow: just design. pp. 202–211. ISBN 978-5-6046152-0-1.
  10. 1 2 Otdelnov, Pavel (2020). "Realism of the Disappearing Real". Khudozhestvennyi zhurnal (114): 24–29. ISSN 0869-4397. Archived from the original on 2025-12-25.
  11. 1 2 Wedland, Aaron James (2019-02-19). "See Death and Life in Dzerzhinsk". The Moscow Times. Archived from the original on 2022-08-21.
  12. 1 2 3 Pavlova, Svetlana (2019-02-17). "The Idea of the Future Turned Out to Be a Speculation". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2025-06-28.
  13. ↑ Otdelnov, A. L. (2019). No Entry Without a Gas Mask! (PDF) (in Russian). Moscow: Triumph. p. 56. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-09-29.
  14. ↑ Otdelnov, Pavel; Baskova, Svetlana (2018-08-08). "The Past That Does Not Disappear". Sigma (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2026-01-14.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 Mille, Daria (2020). Trajectories of Modernization in Russia: Artists Recalibrating the Sensorium / Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics. Karlsruhe: MIT Press. pp. 374–379. ISBN 978-0-262-04445-5.
  16. ↑ Tolstova, Anna (2023-12-15). "Political Landscape: Pavel Otdelnov, Painting in an Expanded Field". Kommersant Weekend, no. 44 (in Russian). Kommersant. Archived from the original on 2023-12-16.
  17. 1 2 3 "Промзона. Публикации" [Promzona. Publications]. Promzona. Archived from the original on 2023-09-29. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  18. 1 2 Maksim Burov, Nadya Plungian (2019-03-03). "Фосген рассеивается. Чем запомнится «ПРОМЗОНА» Павла Отдельнова" [Phosgene Dissipates: What Will Be Remembered About Pavel Otdelnov’s PROMZONA] (in Russian). Colta.ru. Archived from the original on 2023-09-29. Retrieved 2022-08-18.
  19. 1 2 Ivan Streltsov (2020-02-06). "Ржавая «решётка» советской модернизации" [The Rusty “Grid” of Soviet Modernization]. Spectate.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2025-11-17. Retrieved 2026-02-23.
  20. ↑ Strunnikov, Gleb (2019-02-11). "Chemistry, Life, and Death". Uroki istorii. XX vek (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2020-11-27.
  21. ↑ Zolochevskaya, Tatyana (2019-02-27). "What Is Silent in the Industrial Zone?". Rara Avis. Archived from the original on 2026-01-13.
  22. 1 2 Mironova, Tatiana (2025). Optics of Documentary: Practices of Working with Memory and History in Contemporary Art. Ocherki vizual'nosti (in Russian). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. pp. 26–27, 45. ISBN 978-5-4448-2816-8.
  23. ↑ Mironova, Tatiana Andreyevna. ""Promzona" by Pavel Otdelnov at MMCA. Is the Past a Museum?". Mesto iskusstva (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2025-07-11.
  24. ↑ Tarasova, Ekaterina (2026). "Ностальгия в проектах российских художников: утопическое измерение" [Nostalgia in Projects by Russian Artists: The Utopian Dimension] (PDF). Art&Cult (in Russian) (1(61)): 76–91. doi:10.28995/2227-6165-2026-1-76-91. ISSN 2227-6165.
  25. ↑ Yuzhakova, Elizaveta; Bakhturova, Evgeniya; Bezuglov, Dmitry; Domracheva, Maria; Komlyova, Olga, eds. (2017). Catalogue of the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art “New Literacy”. Yekaterinburg: Publishing Center of Ural Federal University. pp. 134–137, 482/490. ISBN 978-5-7996-2244-2.
  26. ↑ de Pury, Kate (2019-02-20). "Artist probes Russia's toxic legacy through family history". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2019-03-28. Retrieved 2019-03-28.
  27. 1 2 "PROMZONA". Innovation Prize. 2020. Retrieved 2026-02-22.
  28. 1 2 Khokhryakova, Svetlana (2020-08-26). ""Innovation" of the Covid Era: From Birth Certificate to Death Certificate". Moskovsky Komsomolets (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2020-08-29. Retrieved 2020-08-30.
  29. 1 2 Bykovsky A. (2021-11-18). ""How to Survive the Present": The Kandinsky Prize Laureates Announced" (in Russian). Forbes. Archived from the original on 2025-02-14. Retrieved 2026-02-23.
  30. ↑ "Promzona". Uppsala konstmuseum. 2022-05-23. Archived from the original on 2023-09-29. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  31. ↑ Zennström, Maria (2022-03-31). "Bojkotta absolut inte den här ryska konsten. Pavel Otdelnovs Promzona är kolossalt inspirerande och lättillgängligt". Aftonbladet (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 2022-05-20. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
  32. ↑ "Names of the Laureates of the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize for 2017 Announced" (in Russian). Artdguide. 2017-04-27. Archived from the original on 2017-06-04. Retrieved 2026-02-22.
  33. ↑ "Ceremony of the Kuryokhin Prize Award for 2016" (in Russian). Sergei Kuryokhin Center for Contemporary Art. 2017-04-26. Archived from the original on 2025-08-04. Retrieved July 21, 2026.
  34. ↑ "11th Kandinsky Prize 2017 announced list of nominees" (in Russian). Kandinsky Prize. Archived from the original on 2022-02-16. Retrieved 2026-02-22.
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