The “MOKH” Exhibition

Museum Resource Center of Noyabrsk hosted the “MOKH” Exhibition within the first interregional competition-exhibition of academic painting “Living Hue” in April 2022.

The name of the project is a play on words. The word “MOKH” is translated from Russian as “moss” and stands for “Young Gifted Artists” or “Malitsa, Reindeer, Khorey” (malitsa is a men’s deerskin overcoat of the peoples of the Extreme North; khorey is a long pole used to drive a team of reindeer).

The “MOKH” Exhibition was a retrospective of the traditional Nenets life depicted in the paintings of young participants of the competition. The exhibition contained works of art school students from all over the region. The exposition was symbolically divided into “female” and “male” parts. This is due to a clear gender division of labor in the Nenets culture. The gender division is distinctly manifested in arts and crafts. For example, women work with hides and leather and sew clothes, while men make garments of wood, bone, and metal.

A documentary film “The Samoyedic Diary” was shown at the exhibition. The film is stored in the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera).

The “MOKH” Exhibition was held within the framework of the 2022-2032 International Decade of Indigenous Languages.