Joseph Brodsky.
A Place as Good as Any
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Team:
Architecture: Kirill Ass, Nadia Korbut
CEO: Alexander Boroda
Technical Director: Ilya Pokrovsky
This exhibition offers, for the first time, a detailed narrative of Joseph Brodsky’s real-life journeys as an émigré between 1972 and 1996, alongside his travels through poetic landscapes. It opens with a reconstruction of the poet’s childhood home in Leningrad — “a room and a half” in a communal apartment on Pestel Street. Subsequent living spaces became symbolic homes for Brodsky: in each, he unconsciously recreated the same close-knit environment around his writing desk. The exhibition is built around this repeating “module of existence” — a study with recognizable features across different geographical settings.
The lighting concept was based on two main elements: the artistic treatment of the overall scenography, and the precise illumination of the exhibits.
For the scenography, the guiding metaphor was daylight — a symbol of each new phase in Brodsky’s life, with its own beginning and end. As the viewer transitions from one study to another, the time-of-day shifts, simulated by natural light streaming through windows.
The journey begins at Pulkovo Airport at dawn and ends with sunset in the Venice room.
The second key component was the lighting for the exhibits themselves, which required meticulous and delicate adjustments due to the extreme sensitivity of many objects.
Here is a walkthrough of the exhibition rooms:
– The Leningrad Room, dedicated to Brodsky’s departure, evokes the atmosphere of Pulkovo Airport with a check-in counter, baggage area, and departure board. Bright early morning light casts long, sharp shadows from the large glass surfaces.
– The England Room features the first of Brodsky’s recreated studies, bathed in diffuse, enveloping light — evoking a foggy British morning.
– In the America Room, sharp sunlight and strong shadows convey the brightness of midday.
– The Sweden Room is lit with cool northern twilight; the exhibit lighting stands out against it as warm and inviting.
– In the Venice Room, the focal point is a projection of a Venetian sunset. The lighting serves mainly to reveal and emphasize the displayed objects.
The connecting corridors are left nearly dark, with only a slanted beam of light illuminating the wall text and a subtle glow from the projections.
