AMO-ZIL — Uralmash: Heirs to the Dream

Avant-garde Center on Shabolovka
2016

This two-part exhibition explored the rise and fall (or transformation) of two industrial giants—AMO-ZIL in Moscow (1916−2016) and Uralmash (Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, UZTM) in Yekaterinburg (1933−2016)—icons of the Soviet industrial age. At the heart of the exhibition was a focus on the people who built this new industrial world: those who dreamed of creating a perfect technical empire capable of overcoming distance, time, and human frailty.

The first part of the exhibition focused on AMO-ZIL, Moscow’s main automobile plant, closed in 2000 and later completely demolished. It was based on a series of glass negatives from the factory archive—discarded in boxes on the street and rescued by chance. These enlarged photographs feature group portraits of the factory’s first workers, taken between 1916 and the 1920s.

The second part of the project centered on Uralmash, represented through contemporary photographs and interviews with the last generation of workers at the plant before its closure.

Part I: AMO-ZIL
Curators
Nikolai Selivanov
Aleksandra Selivanova

Coordinator
Anna Borunova

Video
Mikhail Zraychenko

Part II: Uralmash. Heirs to a Dream
Curator
Polina Ivanova

Photographer
Fyodor Telkov

Interviews
Natalia Shipilova