The Shimmering Land is a duo exhibition that will feature the artworks of Crimean artists Natalia Grezina and Anton Yermolov, who have been working alongside curator Marth von Loeben on a project about lost heritage and Crimean culture. The exhibition will open on the 29 April 2023 and will be publicly available until mid September 2023. 

 

The starting point of the concept behind the exhibition is the collection from Ukraine known as “Crimean Gold” or “Scythian Gold” which was featured at the Allard Pierson museum in Amsterdam, in 2014. The exhibition “Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea” happened to close its doors just after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian government, which left all the historical artefacts in a state of limbo at first, and then at the centre of a ferocious legal battle. The exhibition in the Netherlands wanted to show the critical role of the Crimean peninsula in ancient times since it was a crossroad of cultures, trading routes and many conflicts.

 

The aftermath of this intent, though, saw the artefacts that were torn out of the Crimean museums to be shut off and become inaccessible to the scientists that found, preserved and studied them. Crimean people were also deprived of a huge part of their historical past and, since then, have had no chance to reconnect with their heritage. The project wants to show how the situation around the Scythian Gold collection has since then become a metaphor for the Crimean population, which is feeling stuck between two conflicting parties, much like the artefacts, now buried in a storage facility owned by the museum and unable to return home.