Elena Oskarovna Marttila December 2016

Talks by the exhibition curators, Ksenia Afonina and Libby Howie, will cover the story of how this moving art exhibition entitled ‘Elena Marttila: Art and Endurance in the Siege of Leningrad’, came to fruition, the place Elena’s art holds in the visual memories of the siege of Leningrad, especially when compared to the ‘official’ art of that period; what makes her engraving and print making technique so special and how the project evolved over time.

There will be an open discussion about visitor’s impressions and experiences of the art exhibition as well as the accompanying talks, film screenings and contemporary landscape of cultural memories of the blockade in Russia.

We are expecting a special guest to join us this evening – Larissa Haskell from Oxford, who endured the siege of Leningrad as a 10-year-old girl. We hope very much that she will be fit enough to travel to Cambridge and offer her invaluable contribution to the discussion.

Please come and join us for this informal finissage of the art exhibition and mark the end of this collaborative cultural project, dedicated to the siege of Leningrad and our common history of the Second World War.

Elena Oskarovna’s personal message to British viewers.