Resistance

Drawing on the experience of Ukrainian society, we can define resistance as daily practices that enable people to defend their virtues and dignity. The exhibition “Resistance” aimed to show the changes in society and to trace the transformation of the reality in which we live through the prism of artistic practices. Artistic practices at the intersection of different media, that include different disciplines or have been changed in response to the challenges that have taken place in Ukraine and the world over the past three years, were presented at the exhibition.

Taking the artistic practices as a process aimed at prototyping potential models of interrelationships in society, the exhibition Resistance aimed to start researching resistance practices. How does a society at war understand resistance? What is resistance as a reactive and proactive practice? What can we learn from resistance practices that emerge in times of war? How do our current practices of resistance shape (reflect) our vision of the future and create it?

The exhibition featured ten artists whose works can be divided into several subtopics or thematic fields: work with memory, memorization processes; way how society sees itself -the works where the viewers, to a certain extent, are also the participants in the creation; trauma, traumatic experiences and their impact on the human mind, the internal states in which we live now. The exhibition was displayed from November 10 to December 10, 2023, at the State University of Economics and Technology Shelter, Kryvyi Rih.

Curators: Yuriy Kruchak, Yulia Kostereva.

Artists:

Olena Afanasieva
artbook «Blackout»
artist, curator, and art manager in the sphere of culture and art from Kherson. Head of the public organization ``Center for Cultural Development ``Totem`` (Kherson).
photo by Denis Maksimov
Max Afanasiev
artbook «Blackout»
photographer, media artist, designer, and filmmaker. Since February 24, 2022, he has been focusing on documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
photo by Denis Maksimov
Piotr Armianovski
film «How Will We Remember?»
artist, performer, director, and educator from Donetsk. Piotr works with documentary film, theater, and virtual reality.
photo by Afina Khaya
Olha Babak
artbooks «My shelters»
visual artist and graphic designer, born in Kharkiv who explores the themes of identity and connections with places. Since the full-scale invasion, she has been working on the topic of the impact of war-related trauma.
photo by Oleksandr Babak
Maksym Buba
sound art ``Reconstruction of Luhansk by memory``
sound artist and musician from Luhansk. The main themes of Maksym's work are auditory memory, perception of place and phenomena through sound, the influence of individual memory on collective history, the nature of reality and fantasy.
Maryna Dovhanych
animated short film ``Vacation in Volokhov Yar``
animation artist and filmmaker from Kaniv. Since February 24, 2022, her focus has shifted to artistic documentation of the individual and social changes that Ukrainians going through when facing the genocidal war.
Olha Koval
photo ``Stone in the room``
is a photographer from Chernihiv. She started her artistic practice in 2018. She is currently studying at the Cinematography Department of Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Karyi University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television. Photographer at Zaborona, a Ukrainian online media outlet. Member of MYPH.
Yana Krykun
video art ``Boundaries``
artist from Kryvyi Rih. Works with installation, video art, and site-specific projects.
photo by Maria Burya
Viktoriia Rozentsveih
Series of art objects «Memory Nourishes the Field»
artist from Nova Kakhovka. In her artistic practice, she works in such media as graphics, installation, and art objects. She works with the themes of memory and the emotional aspect of loss. Since February 24, 2022, she has been researching the impact of the war on the territory of the Kherson region.
photo by Pavlo Shapovalov
Maryna Chaika
video documentation of the performance ``Impossibility of Forgetting``
photographer from Kryvyi Rih. She works with the theme of the body and physicality and explores the physical and metaphysical transformations of a person in modern society.

Works

Olena Afanasieva Max Afanasiev
BLACKOUT artbook, 2023
This art book emerged as an artistic practice during the wintertime power outage of 2022-2023. The reflections and insights of Ukrainian artists about that time, which formed the textual content of the art book, allowed us to look at the blackout situation not as a catastrophe but as a resource that we got at our disposal to discover creative and communicative opportunities that were not tied to computers or the Internet, to feel a certain autonomy and value of ourselves as human beings.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Piotr Armianovski
HOW WILL WE REMEMBER?
film, 2022
The oversaturation of visual information seems to make us less sensitive. What is the difference between what we see in person and on the screen? How will we remember this war? An essay film about forms of memory with Oksana Leuta and Kateryna Iakovlenko. It was created for the artistic research lab on war experiences, ``Land to return, Land to care.``

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Olha Babak
MY SHELTERS artbook, 2023
My Shelters art books were created to deal with my fear, which arose from sensitivity to constant danger. They are a reflection on the trauma of war and reflections on safe places that help to adapt and feel supported in times of crisis. The drawings were made on my cardiograms taken after panic attacks that were similar to a heart attack. As these attacks repeated several times, I decided to devote time to working on my anxiety. I used old tiles I found as the covers of the art books. For me, they brought the associations with home and the ruins after shelling that our homes turned into.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Maksym Buba
RECONSTRUCTION OF LUHANSK BY MEMORY
sound art, 2023
This series of audio tracks is an attempt to recreate the soundscape of selected scenes, mostly from pre-war Luhansk, using sound synthesis. Each audio track is annotated with approximate dates and locations, providing a brief description of the scene, giving the listener the opportunity to delve into the context of each scene, and creating the illusion of real field recording. However, in the audio to reproduce certain details of the scene, neither authentic recordings of these events nor actual recordings of the elements of the environment were used. Instead, synthesized sounds with minimal resemblance to what they represent are used. The method reflects the nature of memories when the reconstruction of past phenomena and events is completely synthesized in memory. The impossibility of an actual connection between memories and the past shows the synthetic nature of the landscape of individual memory.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Maryna Dovhanych
VACATION IN VOLOKHOV YAR
animated short film, 2023
In this project, I facilitated the creative process for 15 children who spent six months under Russian occupation and, even after de-occupation, were in constant danger, as their village Volokhiv Yar is situated in the Kharkiv region, which is under daily shelling. By co-creating an animated short film with the children, I wanted to find out how they spent their summer vacations (given that they had experience with summer vacations before the war, during the occupation, and after the de-occupation of their village). I acted as a director and mentor and showed how to create an animated film. All the graphics and narration were created by children and teenagers of Volokhiv Yar village from October 4-6, 2023.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Olha Koval
STONE IN THE ROOM
photo, 2022
The stone in the room is a collective image that reflects the conditions in which I, my family, and my loved ones found themselves during the full-scale invasion of the russian occupiers. Migration, huge crowds of people at train stations and in bomb shelters, a state of frustration due to the constant need to survive, all of this has been embodied in the total heaviness that fills all the free space, suffocates with its presence, and blocks the exit. The photo was created in 2022 at Menu Zona Art Residency, curated by Darius Vaičekauskas, Lithuania, and supported by the Lithuanian Council of Culture.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Yana Krykun
BOUNDARIES
video art, 2022
I asked 99 people to draw the border of Ukraine by memory. I made the first drawing myself to start the work. Most of the drawings were made by people I didn't know, whom I approached on Svobody Avenue in Lviv. When I started this work, I wasn't sure where it would lead or whether I would achieve the desired result. So, it was a kind of social experiment. The imagination about the boundaries of your home is also an indicator of resistance, and not just an indicator but a starting point for understanding what you stand for—again and again, to draw the line between ``us`` and ``them.``

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Viktoriia Rozentsveih
MEMORY NOURISHES THE FIELD
Series of art objects, 2023
A series of graphic objects where the shadow turns into a new form of medium. Light can adjust the shadow by stretching or shortening it. Several lights create several shadows of different shapes. For me, this process is similar to thoughts about the Kherson field and its future—they are just as unstable and diverse and can change at the smallest moment. In this series, I deliberately go beyond materiality and focus on something that has no life without the source of light because that's exactly how I feel about life now. The shadow here symbolizes the constant comparison of everything with Kherson, whether road, sea, or field... Will I ever be able to meet it again?

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Maryna Chaika
IMPOSSIBILITY OF FORGETTING
video documentation of the performance, 2022
War is an overall cataclysm that leaves a deep bloody mark on the history canvas, shades our ``untroubled`` attitude, and remains a burden in our thoughts. It is impossible to remove the war because blood cannot be washed away. The performance is a form of resistance to reconciliation and normalization of war's absurdity. It commemorates the sacrifice of people who died at the frontier line to sake the peaceful existence of future generations. Great pain provokes a mental shift. The memory of this offering will awaken national identity and form a sustainable, conscious civil society.

photo by: Vitaliy Chubenko

Interview with the curators of the exhibition

Yuriy Kruchak — artist, curator. Yuriy Kruchak studied Scenography at Kharkiv State Art College and environmental design at the Kharkiv art-industrial Institute (currently Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts). He received a Master’s degree in Painting from the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv (1999). Got the scholarship Gaude Polonia (National Center for Culture Poland) in 2018. Kruchak’s professional interests include interdisciplinary and post‑artistic practices. Yuriy Kruchak is working in the fringes between art and social studies, and his artistic strategies depend on specific problems and usually engage different communities in the creative process.

Yulia Kostereva — artist and curator. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture, Kiev, Ukraine in 2001. The works of Yulia Kostereva, which are often realized in the forms of installations, objects and joint actions, focus on history and stories related to a place, an object or a person. Her practice concerns both the visual arts and the art of interaction.

Yuriy Kruchak and Yulia Kostereva are founders of the interdisciplinary platform Open Place Kyiv, Ukraine (1999).

COMPETITION WITHIN THE PROJECT AND THE WORKS PRESENTED

Julia Kozak: Who might be interested in the exhibition?

Yuriy Kruchak: These are artists, people interested in contemporary culture, the development of Kryvyi Rih, the creative cluster, and the cultural sector in general, as well as young people and students, particularly those of the State University of Economics and Technology, where the exhibition is held.

Julia Kozak: What is the idea and theme of this exhibition? What criteria were used to select the works?

Yulia Kostereva: The artists were selected based on an open call. In the open-call text, we tried to be as precise as possible about the artistic practices we were looking for, namely, artists’ reactions toward Ukrainian society’s transformations. The exhibition aimed to show works that manifest changes in artists’ strategies or new approaches. Through the artists’ work, the exhibition also explores the changes in society during the war.

We had 74 applications from artists and artistic collectives. The proposed visions of the topic of the exhibition “Resistance” were quite diverse. It was also interesting to see how artists form their ideas about a particular topic. The media environment partially projects our perception of a topic or our idea of it, and one of the tasks of the exhibition was to reconfigure the topic of resistance to talk about a more subtle matter. Some of the proposed works reproduced what was on the surface and what was produced by the media but did not bring anything new to the topic.

Yuriy Kruchak: This exhibition is part of our wider research. It concerns changes in artistic practices in Ukraine. Art and culture change along with society. Ukraine is currently experiencing tremendous changes, primarily due to the war. These processes are also connected with decolonization, with the rejection of the paradigms in which Ukraine has lived for the last hundred years. These changes are also related to the fact that artists and cultural managers are actually becoming subjects. That is, they do not retransmit narratives that existed before or were imposed by external actors but try to critically reflect on what has happened before and is happening now in Ukraine in an attempt to take a proactive stance.

The broad scope of our research is also related to the fact that society has changed and has become more proactive. The viewer has become more critical of artistic practices, and recently, we have dealt with many difficult processes of rethinking the essence of an artist’s work. What do artists create? Is this an artistic product or an environment where this artistic product can emerge in a certain dialogue? In this research, we are interested in the conditions in which artworks emerge and the process of creation. In our view, this is closely related to communication. Most of the works submitted to the competition depict the state of war by visualization of the processes taking place. For us, it was important to show how communication between an artist and society is built and how works are created in the process of this communication. In this process, not only the work as a physical manifestation is important, but also the amount of knowledge formed within such communication.

The exhibition “Resistance” became an open stage for our research. We decided to see the works of a wider range of artists outside our circle of contacts or artists whose practices we had long been familiar with.

The exhibition featured ten authors. One of the sub-themes, or the above-mentioned field of communication, is memory processes. It is about how to build the process of creating artwork to engage memorization processes. The work «How Will We Remember?» by Piotr Armianowski is particularly about this.

Another important subtheme or direction of artistic research is how society sees itself. For example, the work of Yana Krykun “Boundaries”. The author explored how we see our boundaries, our places, and our space. Yana asked people to draw the boundaries of Ukraine. This work has an important element of participatory nature when the viewer is involved in creating the work to a certain extent. This is an important feature of the practices we are researching. This approach demonstrates how communication in the form of images can become part of a larger work. The artist here acts as a communicator or mediator who manifests our ideas. And this is a vivid example of how the artist’s methodology changes.

The exhibition also features a moment of internal resistance expressed in a person’s feelings. It is important to remember the internal states we are living in now. An essential part of our research is how artists visualize the challenging processes they are in. The works include “Impossibility of Forgetting” by Maryna Chaika and “Blackout” by Olena Afanasieva and Max Afanasiev are about. We aim to support such methods of work and artists who activate people at a grassroots level.

Partners

The exhibition was made possible through cooperation with the Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology (SUET), which provided the premises and equipment free of charge. The members of Open Place funded the exhibition at their own expense. The artists’ fees were made possible through the support of CEC ArtsLink.

Support program 2023

The program supported individual applicants and creative teams with research and projects in the field of visual arts that comprehend processes in art and society, initiate and develop new ideas, formats, and approaches in culture. Projects based on a critical stance, questioning the boundaries of art, promoting social engagement, and interdisciplinary projects were welcomed.

12 projects were supported based on jury’s decision (15 artists and researchers a total). We received 153 applications in response to the open call.

Applicants were free to determine the requested amount of support based on the project’s needs. For ease of communication and reporting, we have developed a package of documents, including a memorandum of cooperation and two simple reporting forms.

Activities within the supported projects: development of a concept for a center for contemporary culture; opening a safe art space; creation of a stained glass workshop; residency to explore the local area; research on the activities of internally displaced artists and changes in the Lviv artistic environment after February 24, 2022; research on the practices of Ukrainian artists during the winter blackouts of 2022; research on the practices of participation during the war; a text on the history of colonization through the private stories of one family members; a book about natural environments that emerge on the sites of former industrial sites, a publication on strategies for overcoming dumbness through the practice of women’s writing; a photo series documenting the processes of war.

Within the competition 2023 the following artists, researchers, and collectives were supported: Olena Afanasieva; Yana Kononova; Mykhailo Kulishov; Oleksandra Kushchenko; Kateryna Levchenko; Larion Lozovyi; “Mizhkimnatnyi  prostir” (Denys Pankratov, Victoria Dorr); Magran Tata; Tamara Turliun; Asia Tsisar; Natasha Chychasova; Oleksandra Shchur.

Supported projects

Olena Afanasieva
REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES. BLACKOUT
art book, 2023
The project accumulated the artistic practices and reflections of Ukrainian artists that emerged during the winter blackouts in the form of the art book Blackout, which was also created during the electricity outage. The visual content of the art book is based on two black-and-white photographs found in a 1983 album bought at a flea market in Ternopil. On each page of the album, these photos were manually reproduced in ink, visualizing the awareness of the value and importance of repetitive actions and rituals as a mechanism of psychological self-balancing and recovery. The textual content of the art book ``Blackout`` includes stories of artists - painters, playwrights, architects, actors - who described their ways of surviving the blackout and their new (or renewed old) artistic practices.
Yana Kononova
RADIATIONS OF WAR
photo series, 2022 — ongoing
The work on the Radiations of War series started in March 2022. On June 6, 2023, Russian forces detonated the machinery room of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station, destroying the Kakhovka Reservoir dam and subsequent ecocide—flooding downstream along the Dnieper River. To study the impact of this technogenic disaster, the author traveled to flooded areas near Kherson and researched the consequences of reduced water levels in the Kakhovka Reservoir further upstream along the Dnieper's riverside in Zaporizhzhya, Khortytsia Island, and suburbs. The photo series focuses on the spatial portrayal of war-affected milieux, contextualizing this imagery within Ukraine's industrial and geological history.
Mykhailo Kulishov
DONBAS: AFTER INDUSTRY
photobook, 2023
The photobook draws attention to the importance of preserving and restoring natural environments that emerge on the sites of former industrial facilities. The book contains archival photographs documenting the history and transformation of industrial and post-industrial landscapes in eastern Ukraine. The pictures illustrate the transformation of post-industrial landscapes into natural environments, demonstrating the possibilities of their restoration. The book can serve as a basis for further research and initiatives to preserve and restore natural environments in different regions of Ukraine facing similar challenges. The photographs collected in the book may become almost the only source demonstrating what industrial landscapes looked like before 2022.
Oleksandra Kushchenko
RESEARCH: OPEN CITY
research, 2023

This is an attempt to ``capture the moment`` and record the changes in the Lviv artistic environment after February 24, 2022. The set contains the wide range of experiences from apartment exhibitions, through independent art galleries to the largest private institution in the region, Jam Factory. Hopefully the attention to relocated artists by the local media will foster empathetic connections in the artistic community and help to strengthen artists. The interviews recorded as part of the research, personal communication, and statistics collected from open sources allow us to outline the benefits of horizontal connections, illustrate the importance of mutual support within the artistic community, point out weaknesses, and think about strategies for strengthening.

Kateryna Levchenko
THE FIRST PROJECT OF THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE IN KRYVYI RIH
residency, 2023
The first project of the Kryvyi Rih Center for Contemporary Culture was a ``residence`` for actors from the fields of culture, art, business, and civil society from Kryvyi Rih. The project participants learned about the experience of institutions from other cities of Ukraine, including the Jam Factory Art Center, Izolyatsia, Lviv Municipal Art Center, atelienormalno, Teple Misto, Platform for Interdisciplinary Practice Open Place, and Lviv Radio. The project provided a place, time, and space for public dialogue to define the mission, vision, and role that might have such a center in Kryvyi Rih.
Larion Lozovyi
PRACTICES OF PARTICIPATION BEFORE AND DURING THE BIG WAR
article, 2023
The text ``Practices of Participation Before and During the Big War`` was written based on a lecture of the same name and a study by Larion Lozovyi in the Kukhnia-Lviv volunteer community in 2023. ``Interaction with people is one of the cursed questions of contemporary art theory. It is hard to imagine a discussion that would not get bogged down in insoluble dilemmas of an ethical and aesthetic nature. Capable of having an undeniable impact, participatory art realizes it in a different way than visual art. Previously, my artistic practice was as far from participation and interaction as possible, and I could hardly imagine myself involving communities of people in it. However, with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russia, I found myself in one of these communities. Participatory art, previously known as abstraction, has become a real factor in my (artistic) life.``
Magran Tata
GALLERY ``TVORCHE NEZHYT``
art space, 2023

A safe art space that allows young artists to exhibit their works for the first time, gain experience, and sometimes even sell their first works. Formation of a sustainable community of young artists and students. We achieved most of our goals: giving the artistic community and city residents a new lease on life, rebooting the formats of events, and making them more open. We managed to unite disparate creative bubbles, serving as a platform for mutual collaborations and performances - from performance and music to poetry and literature. Each opening and event served as a kind of networking. The fundamental format is pop-up exhibitions, which allow anyone, without exception, to bring anything on the day of the event and be sure that there will be no judgment and no fear of criticism.

Tamara Turliun
RESIDENCY AT DARNITSA
residency, exhibition, 2023
The residence in Darnytsia is a way to explore the area of the ``left bank`` in Kyiv, namely the place called Darnytsia, and its surroundings. During the tour, we got acquainted with the monumental heritage of the neighborhood: houses and mosaics. For a better acquaintance, we used materials from the book by S. Shyrochin and O. Mykhailyk ``Unknown Periphery of North Left bank of Kyiv``. The residency lasted for two weeks. The first week was dedicated to introductory meetings, excursions, and planning the route for the second week. During the second week, we followed a joined route, had dinner from Gostynets, and worked on the preparation of the exhibition. The residency ended with the exhibition Bychacha Krov (Bull's Blood).
Asia Tsisar
A GIRL WHO DREAMED OF A PLACE WHERE APRICOTS FALL ON THE STREET
essay, 2023
The essay tells the history of colonization through the intimate stories of one family's members. It marks a new level of social consciousness when we begin to talk about painful and uncomfortable topics in our families with our loved ones.
The essay is a part of the project ``Taking the Train to the East``, which aims to present and make visible the perspective of marginalized communities and cultures.
Natasha Chychasova
SILENCE FÉMININ
publication, 2023
The publication Silence féminin is dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of silence through the practice of women's writing. In the texts created in a dialog, the authors share their experiences, reflect on strategies for overcoming silence, and the limitations of the theoretical apparatus. Since the beginning of russia's full-scale invasion, this project has become a tool of support for the participants and a way to manifest their voices, postulating fragility and strength at the same time. The texts rethink the transformations that occurred to the authors due to the invasion that affected their perception of the phenomenon of silence and attempts to find their voice.
Oleksandra Shchur
OPENING OF A WINDOW
stained glass studio, 2023
As part of the funding, a stained glass workshop was created and equipped at the Kyiv Institute of Automation. The author created and installed her first individual monumental project, a window in the technique of classical stained glass, and gifted it to the local cultural space Spaska, whose activities and values are close to her. There was a ceremony of an official ``opening of the window`` which was attended by about 80 visitors.

Support program 2020

The program supported individual applicants and creative teams with research and projects in the field of visual arts that comprehended the processes in art and society, initiate and develop new ideas, formats, and approaches in culture. Projects based on a critical stance and interdisciplinary projects were welcomed.
We received 65 robust applications from the individuals and collectives. 14 projects were supported (a total of 17 artists and researchers).
The activities within the selected projects ranged from researching Ukrainian vernacular photography to studying the creative industries sector in Ukraine; from finding alternative methods of education to analyzing political and economic challenges; from working with memory to rethinking the myths that are being built in Ukrainian society.

The winners of the 2020 competition: Asia Bazdireva, Anatoly Belov and Viktor Ruban, Uliana Bychenkova and Anna Shcherbyna, Andrii Dostliev, Aleksandra Kadzevych, Yelyzaveta Korneichuk, Garry Krayevets, Polina Limina and Hanna Oryshchenko, Larion Lozovoy, Vasyl Liakh, Tonya Melnik, Lada Nakonechna, Valentina Petrova, Maksym Khodak.

Supported projects

Asia Bazdireva
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT
article, 2020
The text draws attention to important issues that should precede the simple appropriation of European environmental rhetoric. The test suggests looking at the narrative tool of catastrophe and the imagined end of humanity to draw attention to the non-universality of such concepts as time and imagination of the future. The peculiarities of European and Soviet modernity and the difference in their political and economic backgrounds should also be considered in criticism of the concepts of man and nature and their relationship. To ensure that the environment does not become an empty signifier, and that disaster is not the only operational scenario, we propose to focus on situated knowledge - naming the tangled experience of a particular land and its versions of time. They make possible not only alternatives to the Soviet version of history but also various possibilities for working with the imagination today.
Anatoly Belov and Viktor Ruban
RITUAL-FAIRY TALE FOR CYBELE
research, 2020
The project has the idea of replacing the mystical ritual with artistic and performative, giving the Phrygian goddess Cybele new qualities - the patroness and protector of queer people. The project addresses the problem of representation of the LGBTQ+ community in Ukrainian society, where this community is often closed and seen as the different sects of interest. The project aims to unite people in one safe queer space through the ritual fairy tale game, to get to know and feel each other. Together, in a common space without rigid gender and sexual roles, to practice our physicality through guided by performers and psychedelic electronic music. The project aims to increase the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community and its inclusion in the general cultural context of Ukraine.
Uliana Bychenkova and Anna Shcherbyna
READER
a series of reading meetings, 2020
The meetings are themed around the positional diversity of relations between textuality and materiality in the artistic and theoretical practices of contemporary feminist art. Possible positions: To delve in search of a different (not phallocentric) morpho-logic of expression; To incorporate text and reading into artistic practice by assigning them the status of a material object; To promote the practice of modesty of literature as a collaborator; To argue about the relationship between text and its maid illustration; Or other and other artistic tricks of mastering the relationship with the Theory. Joint readings and discussions are a space for engaging in dialogues between female artists and female theorists.
Andrii Dostliev
UKRAINIAN SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY
zin, 2020
The project aims to assemble an archive of Ukrainian vernacular photographs that met the eye of Soviet imperial optics. They were either destroyed (often along with their owners) or removed from their original context and hidden in the archives. All the textual descriptions and a few images come from the dossier of residents of the Soviet part of Ukraine who were repressed in the 1930s. They are part of Ukrainian culture that vanished after decades of colonial rule. They are just traces of someone's family photos, but also traces of the colonial gaze, which was the last to look at these photos and was forever imprinted in them.
Aleksandra Kadzevych
KALININA, VYNOHRADNA, SADOVA
exhibition, 2020
The project deals with the dialectic of internal and external through the study of painting in relation to the surrounding space, as an object that can shape the perception of the territory and reveal its new complex meanings. Leaving her studio and her usual workspace, the artist decided to exhibit a new painting series in an unknown and almost uninhabited place, using the resources of this place, its territory, and its components. From being a passive participant in the exhibition, the artist becomes an organizer who shapes her own field and creates her own context.

Yelyzaveta Korneichuk
ON THE SHORES OF THE EOCENE SEA. ART IN THE KYIV MUSEUM OF NATURE
article, 2020
The project explores the visual component of the National Museum of Natural History's exposition —artworks by Ivan Yizhakevych, Fedir Krychevsky, Hennadii Hlickman, and other authors. The project resulted in the publication of the first descriptions of the works of Ivan Yizhakevych, Fedir Krychevsky, and Hennadii Hickman. The research materials were handed over to the museum team for further use and work with them. A discussion about Ukrainian paleoart and its further research has been started. The project contributes to the redefinition of the Museum of Nature as an art space and to the incorporation of its collection in an artistic context. The project outlined the first step in actualizing the museum as an alternative artistic platform. The team plans to continue working on unlocking the artistic potential of the Museum of Nature.
Garry Krayevets
CATALOG OF THE NOCH GALLERY
publication, 2020
Publication, which summarizes the three years of functioning of the NOCH Gallery. The publication includes texts by artists and curators about the significance and importance of this gallery, which in three years managed to accumulate a small cultural community and support the launch of some artists' careers. Creating self-published materials was another important experience of the project. Some of the books were distributed to artists. The publication will help reach an audience beyond Odesa and inspire self-organized and non-institutional initiatives in other cities to continue working in this direction, developing and enriching the art field.
Polina Limina and Hanna Oryshchenko
PROVINCIAL ART
research, 2020
How can we define Ukrainian art that was created away from the trends that prevailed in specific periods of time? Neither art brut nor naive art, outsider art, or marginalized creativity fully correspond to the local context. The project team chose the definition of provincial art to overcome a white spot in the country's cultural trends. During their expeditions to small towns and villages, they searched for artists whose works have their own logic and system but do not necessarily fit the tastes of elite art platforms. They researched and analyzed cultural life in Stryi, Smila, and Budy. The collected materials became the basis for the articles they wrote.
Larion Lozovoy
SYNERGY AND ENGAGEMENT: THREE STORIES ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUILDING CAPITAL AND ART
article, 2020
``Synergy and engagement`` is an artistic study of the interconnectedness of gentrification, the expansion of developers' capital, the digital economy, and the cultural sector's role in these contradictory processes. The author examines key examples of ``adaptive reuse`` of former industrial sites, such as factories and plants, which have become creative clusters or have been converted into luxury housing. Culture plays a central role in legitimizing such projects, smoothing out the contradictions of their implementation. Contemporary art finds itself in a precarious position: its inherent sensitivity to context conflicts with the obviousness of instrumentalization, conditions in which roles are assigned in advance.
Vasyl Liakh
TREASURE
documentary film, 2020
The plot of the film was based on a family legend about the director's grandmother-in-law, who, in the 1960s, buried the medals of her father in the garden. The chatting about the family history helped to highlight the patriarchal domination as an important feature of the seaside town, its past and present. The film documents the daily life of a fairly typical Mariupol family in a neighborhood near the port and interviews the heroes and heroines about the past.
Tonya Melnik
SCARF-POSTER
workshops on batik technique, 2020
Scarf-poster is a personal attribute of a political statement on fabric that recreates an existing poster used at a particular political event that was essential to the person or one's own statement that can also be used as a poster. The workshop participants were allowed to work in a comfortable environment and friendly atmosphere, to master the batik technique, and to create a piece of clothing. A series of video tutorials on the batik technique was also created so participants could work remotely.
Lada Nakonechna
REPORT BY EUGENE HOLOSTENKO
artistic research, 2020
The research is based on the method that considers artworks as documents that testify to a specific social and political context. The basic assumption is that the aesthetics of socialist realism established a particular mode of vision. The project revealed the peculiarity of forming a disciplined vision, which historically occurred through the identification of the viewer's experience with the artistic image in the representational apparatus regulated by the one-party system. This process was facilitated by the artist's self-censorship, the adoption of a rigid representation policy, and self-imprisonment in perfecting the mastery of realistic style. Thus, art became a mechanism for taming the artist and the viewer. Lada Nakonechna created the series of drawings by copying black-and-white reproductions of painted landscapes from the Holostenko catalog.
Valentina Petrova
A SMALL TREE AGAINST A LARGER ONE
sculpture, 2020
In Oleshky Sands, a performative sculpture was created that is a monument to the landscape - in a very literal sense - not only as an artificially made object that, installed in a particular area, refers to it, marks it, but also as an artificially made object that repeats the landscape in which it is located. The material from which the sculpture was created (sand) is a physical dimension of the landscape. The elements that made up the basis of the sculpture (aircraft shell, sand, steppe vegetation) refer to the history of this area, to specific periods (including the present) filled with significant events. The form of the sculpture (three-layered, partially buried under the surface, rapid decay) is an allusion to time (relationships - past, present, future) and cyclicality.
Maksym Khodak
WARHOLA - ARTIST FROM NOWHERE
research, 2020
The project explores the current state of the neorusyn movement in the Zakarpattia region of Ukraine through the figure of Andy Warhol. The mockumentary resulting from this research will tell an alternative fictionalized story of Warhol's life. Andy does not die in 1987 but moves to Zakarpattia, the homeland of his ancestors, where he continues to engage in active artistic practice, reflecting on local processes. The author traces the use of the image of Andy Warhol as one of the national heroes of Rusyns.

SOURCE

Publication

The publication SOURCE is a collection of interviews of people and groups who are actively challenging the political status-quo regarding the status of marginalized people and other difficult political issues, and who have visions of proactive tactics on how to address them.

 

The second issue of SOURCE that was published in USA in November 2018 focused on topic of migration. Migration though was understood in more symbolic way as a process of transition, which is fundamental to so much of contemporary life. People migrate between identities, countries, languages, economic realities, genders, political beliefs, contexts.

 

 

Publisher: Open Place
Edited by: Yulia Kostereva, Yuriy Kruchak, Maria Prokopenko, Cayla Lockwood, Jaime F. Iglehart
Published: New York, 2018
Language: English
Details: 8 pages
Category: Journal
Designed by: Open Place

Photos by: Yuriy Kruchak, Elisabeth Belomlinsky

SOURCE

Nomadic park

Intervention

August 29, 2014
Bialystok, Poland

Nomadic Park is a mobile installation of trees that were uprooted due to a reconstruction of the street. The eradicated trees were replanted into wheeled garbage bins and moved around the city, giving them new life and symbolic meaning.

Specifically dedicated to the world’s 51 million refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced persons, the performance and mobile installation recreated the movement of refugees forced to leave their homes and travel to a new and uncertain destination. As local residents encountered these living beings placed in mobile dumpsters, they were forced to experience the real life circumstances of refugees throughout the globe.

At the end of the travel the trees took the place of the park, cut down a few years before, during the reconstruction of the main street of the city.

Events took place in the frame of exhibition Deprivation Arsenał Gallery, curator Monika Szewczyk

Net of the Dream

Intervention

September – October, 2011  
Lublin, Poland

An object migrating from the suburbs to the city center and back has become a symbolic interface, a temporary space established with the aim of connecting Lublin’s communities and social groups.

The objective of this happening was an attempt at discovering the answers to the questions. How can it be made possible to achieve a balance, a connection between the analog «off-line» culture, which is strictly bound to the nature of the places which people inhabit, and the modern, digital and virtual «on-line» culture, where it is not the place where one lives that is of any importance? How can bonds and connections between people representing those two different cultures be forged, and how can they become involved in a mutually collaborative creative process?

Net of the Dream

How does community act?

Workshop

June 3, 10, 11, 2017
Warsaw, Poland

What information about refugees and migrants does a person gets most often? These are statistics that demonstrate growing numbers of migrants year by year as well as information about various incidents and crimes with involvement of refugees and migrants. In public space the messages that contain hate speech or claim that one nation is higher than another are increasingly common. The social media are following the same trend. Fear makes the situation even worse. The lack of information from the side of refugees and migrants contributes to the spread of negative stereotypes, leading to the dehumanization of this group of people. This, in turn, provides fertile ground for the manipulation of public consciousness. That is why individual stories, interpersonal relations and collaboration between different ethnic groups are so important.

A series of working meetings “How does community act?” had aim to start a new practice of collaboration between representatives of various social and ethnic groups of newcomers and local residents in Poland. The workshop sought to build trustful relations within the group, to find to find the points of intersection of various opinions, to reveal important topics, to pose the questions, and to work together on them. The workshop provided the ground and conditions where the diverse believes could meet. Everyone had opportunity to speak out and to hear the other. Disputed situations and individual prejudices were discussed in order to develop strategies of possible actions.

Workshop introduced the methods and possibilities of collective work: the practices, games and techniques that allow critical reflection and active search of grassroots ways on solving the social problems. During the workshop the participants shared their individual stories. Based on that stories the problematic was formulated  – the topics like: emotional and psychological violence; instability of the position; vulnerability; fear; lack of social relations ; loneliness;  xenophobia ; identity and self-identification; necessity and possibility to defend of labour and human rights; the influence of global corporations on the living conditions of people. Ideas how to behave in the certain situations were proposed and discussed. Participants exchanged the information about available resources and opportunities, and together decide the possible methods of action.

In group was discussed of how and around what people could unite. The main accent was on active personal life position. During the workshop, the understanding of the community as a group that united according to ethnic or national characteristics was transformed into conception of unification around common values and believes. And idea to defend the rights of particular group was rethought as necessity to fight commonly for human rights that allows escape the isolation and expand the social circle.  The participants agreed on necessity public discussion on problematic connected with migration.

During the workshop were recorded collected and created the materials: from intimated stories to universal messages that would be understandable for various social, ethnic, and political groups.

20170603_174738

Fresh Market

The first stories of Fresh Market were collected in 2017 in Warsaw during collaboration with labor migrants from Ukraine. It was an attempt to work with the issue not in an esoteric way. At the beginning we heard the stories of labor migrants from the employee in various organizations in Poland, which help to solve social and legal issues. We were looking for the opportunity to get access to the real people to hear from them about the problems they faced. When we have had a certain amount of stories collected in archive, we questioned ourselves what this archive is like, how do we relate to it? Do we believe that certain number of stories put together, make the work full?

The archive contains intimate stories of different people. We’re curating the way that information is coming to us by framing the experience through a series of questions. Currently, the archive has stories on emigration, violations of labor and human rights, patriarchal control over women, xenophobia, self-identification and identity, and other precarious conditions. An archive is a kind of mélange – a mixing of various narratives and social compounds, spectrum toward freedom and restrictions in the different sites.

In the archive we bring together different contexts and experiences by documenting and creating them. And, of course, the core is not in the number of stories we want to get or to reach the certain number, but in their totality, in how these stories give meaning to each other, how they relate to each other, how they make a conversation with each other. How one story answer the questions raised in another stories, and how together they create a certain narrative.

Another series of questions related to the form of the archive and its subjectivity. How should look a space where these narratives come out? Who are the final editor and storyteller? As the creators of the archive, we want Fresh Market to be more than a positing of a traumatic experience of the person whoever’s going to share a story, so that it can be an environment for collaborative work. We want to trace how the story is read and perceived. For this we use certain methodologies. Fresh Market is a nomadic archive that is filled in and worked on in the different contexts. To emphasize the multiplicity of interpretations, we use transparent layers that are imposed on top of the initial text, each time when it is read in a new context. We invite people to read the story and highlight what seems important to them. Selected fragments are placed on a separate layer that overlap the previous layer, the name of the person who read, and the date of reading is placed next to the reading results.

Discussions that are happened during the process of reading become a part of the archive as a separate text document.

Fresh Market Archive

Виставки:

Migration in Transition
Long Island City, New York
Flux Faxtory
November 15 – 20, 2018
Somewhere now
Lublin, Poland
Labirynt Gallery
July 21– August 12, 2018
Gotong Royong. The things we do together
Warsaw, Poland
U-jazdowski
October 19, 2017– January 14, 2018

At the heart of the community

Publication

The texts and interviews collected in this book belong to the expert guests of the project At the heart of the community, who gave lectures and led workshops at the Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol) from May to September 2015, but also to members of the local community who attended those meetings.

All of the authors included herein reflect on the general condition of cultural institutions in present-day Ukraine, as well as offering insight into the particular condition of the Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol). All agree on one thing: that reformation of such institutions is a pressing challenge.

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Edited by: Yuliya Kosteryeva, Yuriy Kruchak, Katya Shcheka
Published: Warsaw, 2015
Language: Ukrainian, English
Details: Softcover, 199 pages
ISBN: 978-8364177330
Category: Book
Designed by: Emilia Obrzut

Photos inside by: Yuriy Kruchak

 

Publication - "At the heart of the community"

Content

Kitchen Orchestra

Interactive Installation

May – November 2013
Donetsk, Ukraine

This interdisciplinary project combined contemporary electronic technologies with objects of everyday life. The artists turned pans into percussion instruments. All of the objects through the system of sound pickups were connected to a metal gong, made of tank car.

Once participants picked up available drumsticks and began to make music, it became immediately clear that in order to avoid creating a deafening cacophony, they needed to find a common rhythm and tune. This created an opportunity for dialogue, interaction and artistic collaboration.

Exhibition

Meeting place
Donetsk, Ukraine
IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives
May 17 – November 3, 2013