SLAVA MOGUTIN'S BIO

Slava Mogutin is a New York-based Russian artist and author, who works across different media, including photography, video, text, performance, sculpture, and painting.

Born in Siberia, in the industrial city of Kemerovo, Mogutin moved to Moscow at age 14. He soon began working as a journalist and editor for the first independent Russian papers, publishers and radio stations. By the age of 21, he had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation for his outspoken queer writings. Accused of “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms”; “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence”; “inflaming social, national, and religious division”; “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions”—he became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to seven years. Forced to leave Russia, he was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International and PEN American Center.

Upon his arrival in New York City, Mogutin shifted his focus to visual art and became an active member of the downtown art scene. Since 1999, his photography and multimedia work has been exhibited internationally including P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Museum of Art and Design in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, The Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in Spain. In 2004, together with his partner-collaborator Brian Kenny, he co-founded SUPERM, a multimedia art team responsible for site-specific gallery and museum shows in the US and across Europe.

Mogutin is the author of two hardcover monographs of photography, Lost Boys and NYC Go-Go (powerHouse Books, 2006 and 2008), and seven books of writings published in Russian. He is the winner of the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize for Poetry (2000). His poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies in eight languages. He has translated into Russian Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, William S. Burroughs’ essays and Dennis Cooper’s fiction. As an actor Slava appeared in Bruce LaBruce’s Skin Flick (1999) and Laura Colella’s independent feature Stay Until Tomorrow (2004). He’s currently at work on his third book of photography, Panoramic View.

www.slavamogutin.com
http://slavamogutin.blogspot.com