The Nenets. Modern culture and crafts, folklore groups, professional art

Folk performing groups and professional art. In the Soviet era, the Nenets culture of the Nenets, Yamal Nenets, and Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) autonomous areas received a new development impulse. The composer, folklorist, and arranger, Merited Culture Worker of the Russian Federation Semyon N. Nyaruy made a major contribution to developing Nenets music culture. Elena G. Susoy (soloist of the Syoyotey Yamal , or the Singing Yamal, ensemble) and Polina G. Turutina were outstanding Nenets song performers, folklorists, and folklore scholars. At different times, these autonomous areas had many successful ethnic performing groups Khayar , Maymbava , Numgykotsya , Sera’sev , Syoyotey Yamal , Kheiro , Bus-Kan , the experimental amateur theater Ilebts . The national dance ensemble Syra-sev (The Snowflake, in the city of Salekhard) and the Nenets song and dance ensemble Khayar (The Sun, in the city of Naryan-Mar) were winners and runners-up at many Russian and international festivals and are their autonomous areas’ cultural calling cards, even though they were founded back in the 1960s.

New art forms emerged in the autonomous areas in the Soviet era, such as paintings and sculpture that the Nenets with their skills in precisely rendering forms, movement, and color had a particularly affinity with. The first Nenets artist to gain widespread fame was Novozemelsky Nenets Ilya K. (Tyko) Vylka (1886–1960). His works can be seen in the Arctic and Antarctic Museum and in the Arkhangelsk Regional Art Museum. Leonid Lar, a painter and drawing artist, and ethnic decorative arts master Igor Khudi deserve special mention as contemporary Nenets artists. 

In the 1980s–1990s, the ranks of Nenets elite expanded to include creative and academic intelligentsia ( Yuri K. Vella [Ayvaseda] , Anna P. Nerkagi, Elena T. Pushkareva , Galina P. Kharyuchi ) and law scholars and politicians ( Grigory P. Ledkov, Sergey N. Kharyuchi ) whose initiatives and projects are intended to protect the indigenous populations’ rights, and to protect and revive the ethnic cultural heritage.