This exhibition features six research and creative projects that capture what history means in practice: what humans create, destroy, rebuild, and tell themselves about the process. The featured researchers are historians, artists, journalists, anthropologists, and architects, and they deploy different methods to explore the history and humanity of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

In contrast to Current (2018), which organized disparate academic research with a continuous strip of imagery, Shifting Ground drew visitors across the large, discontinuous gallery space with full-height supergraphics drawn from each project. Within each project, reproductions of images, maps, and documents were arrayed on a “structural framework” — a graphic suggesting the scaffolding that each project builds to bring together disparate historical events and artifacts.

Central to the exhibition were a series of original photographs and essays from the #5Kfromthefrontline project, an exploration of daily details of living through military violence in Ukraine. The project is a collaboration between photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind and writer Alisa Sopova, and was later exhibited at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture.

Mounted in honor of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Exhibited at the Center for Government and International Studies, October 27, 2023- February 25, 2024.

Scott served as lead exhibition designer, project manager, and curatorial consultant, designing and coordinating installation of environmental graphics.

Curators
Eve Blau
Alexandra Vacroux

Contributors
Dasha Bough, map-collage
Igor Ekstajn, “A Modicum of Peace” and “Lower Lusatia”
Alex Fisher, “What’s Mined is Yours”
Morgan Forde, “Looking Good on Paper”
Michael Keller, “Lower Lusatia”
Alisa Sapova, “5K From the Frontline”
Anastasia Taylor-Lind, “5K From the Frontline”

Exhibition Design
Scott March Smith

Exhibition Producer
Rima Abousleiman

Curatorial Team
Cris Martin
Svetlana Rukhelman
Laura Sargent
Genevieve Wallace
Natasha Yefimova-Trilling

CGIS Exhibition Coordinator
Bettina Burch