Olga Sviblova: "There were only few places were I was welcomed as warmly as in Baku"

Vestnik Kavkaza spoke with the director of the Multimedia Art Museum Olga Sviblova about cultural contacts between Russia and Azerbaijan and interethnic relations.

- Olga Lvovna, what projects did you organize jointly with Azerbaijani artists and foundations?

- We are very friendly with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, we have shown an exhibition of Azerbaijani artists in our Multimedia Art Museum. I watched with admiration the Azerbaijani projects at the last Moscow Biennale of Art in the Tretyakov Gallery - the projection of patterns of national carpets by Orkhan Mammadov and the wonderful multimedia project of Leyla Aliyeva, Vice President of the Foundation. I know many wonderful Azerbaijani artists, two or three days ago I saw my beloved friend, the great artist Aidan Salakhova.

- What attitude was shown towards you and the Multimedia Art Museum from the Azerbaijani side?

- Awesome. I have been to Baku several times, and in few places I was received so warmly, intelligently and intelligently. I was shown museums, I met wonderful people. It was extremely interesting to meet them, they all became my friends. When I first came to Azerbaijan after a very long break, I knew only a few people there, and when I left, I had dozens of friends in the republic. It was amazing, oriental hospitality - not dashing, but very restrained and intelligent hospitality.

- How do you feel about attempts to present peoples as warring ones?

- I do not understand those who seek to divide people into nations. There are specific people whom I love, whom I do not love very much and who are distant to me. My relationship with them does not depend at all on what nationality they have, where they live, what their social status or skin color is.
I do not understand how you can not love a person, for example, because he is Ukrainian, even if we have problems with Ukraine, or because he is Georgian, if we once had problems with Georgia. Is it because of nationality that we become different people? It cannot be that the nation and the people be an enemy or a friend - everywhere a person finds friends and everywhere there are people who are not compatible with him.

Of course, mass consciousness can probably be manipulated. A person, when he is a mass, becomes completely different. But it is no coincidence that I have been working in art for almost my entire adult life, because it is a manifestation of individuality. People on an individual level are wonderful if they do not become a crowd that can be fooled by any dope.