“Reserves” is an exhibition presented as part of the parallel programme of the Green Young theatre festival at the Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, dedicated to theatre designers whose practices unfold at the intersection of scenography and contemporary art.
During the festival, the theatre stage in the Green Hangar serves as the venue for performances, while the Excise Hall is transformed into the reserves—a space revealing the theatre’s invisible backstage life. In theatrical practice, reserves are storage facilities for stage sets, props, and fragments of productions that have either already been performed or are yet to premiere. Within the context of the exhibition, however, the notion takes on a broader meaning. Reserves refers to artistic practices that exist beyond the stage: images and ideas that have no place within a performance, as well as autonomous artistic statements that emerge alongside theatre rather than within it.
For many scenographers, working outside the theatre becomes a way of preserving their artistic independence. In this sense, they often find themselves in the “reserves” of theatrical art—as practitioners of visual, spatial, and conceptual languages that develop in parallel to theatre. While their work remains rooted in scenography, it simultaneously extends beyond its disciplinary boundaries, evolving into autonomous artistic worlds with their own systems of reference.
The exhibition is conceived as a labyrinthine landscape assembled from decommissioned stage sets, fragments of scenography, and site-specific installations. It deliberately recreates the atmosphere of a theatrical storage facility: a dense environment where scenery from different productions coexists, objects form accidental tableaux, and unexpected relationships emerge between disparate elements, generating new compositions and unforeseen associations. The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider the status of stored sets and installations, and to reflect on where the boundary between theatre and contemporary art truly lies.
The exhibition brings together two generations of artists: established figures who have shaped the visual language of contemporary theatre and art, and younger practitioners who continue to expand and reinterpret theatrical methodologies today. Together, their works create a dialogue on the nature of scenography, the autonomy of artistic practice, the limits of theatre, and the possibility of art existing independently of performance.

Participants: Irina Korina, Alexander Shishkin-Khokusai, Olga Bozhko, Stepan Lysenko, Dina Borovik, Alina Brovina, Anna Grebennikova, Elizaveta Minaeva, Anna Agafonova, and Olga Suslova.