Feature

October digest: art events in Ukraine and Europe

11 october, 2023

Untitled, SOSka group, photo. From the MOKSOP collection. Source: moksop.org

Lecture Series «Ukrainian Art: In Search of Itself» at NAMU (National Art Museum of Ukraine)

Dates: October 6, 2023 – December 22, 2023
Address: Kyiv, 6 Hrushevskoho Street, NAMU (National Art Museum of Ukraine)
Operating Hours: Fridays at 4:00 PM
Ticket Price: 200 UAH (discounted – 100 UAH)

Organizer(s): National Art Museum of Ukraine

The traditional lecture series at the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) continues this year from October 6. The lectures are divided into four sections:

Art of the 19th Century:
October 6 — «The Cossack Era in Ukrainian Painting of the 19th–Early 20th Century» (lecturer: Lesya Tolstova).
October 13 — «Man and Nature. Ukrainian Landscape in the 19th–Early 20th Century» (lecturer: Lesya Tolstova).
October 20 — «Oleksandr Murashko: Riding the Waves of Artistic Change» (lecturer: Mariana Sirko).

Ancient Art:
October 27 — «Iconography of Kyivan Rus» (lecturer: Olexandra Shevliuha).
November 3 — «Heavenly and Earthly: Ukrainian Iconography of the 13th–17th Centuries» (lecturer: Olha Burlaka).
November 10 — «Faces of Our Past: Ukrainian Portraits of the 16th–18th Centuries» (lecturer: Halyna Bielikova).

National Art Museum of Ukraine. Source: namu.ua

Modernism in Ukraine:
November 17 — «Modernism in Ukraine: Terminology, Trends, Masters» (lecturer: Olena Kashuba-Volvach).
November 24 — «Mikhailo Zhuk: From Modernism to Art Deco» (lecturer: Olena Kashuba-Volvach).
December 1 — «Vasyl Krychevsky and Georgiy Narbut: In Search of a National Style» (lecturer: Danylo Nikitin).

Contemporary Art:
December 8 — «Tetiana Yablonska: Between Modernism and Socialist Realism» (lecturer: Anna Aliieva).
December 15 — «Art of the 1970s. Practices of Subtle Resistance» (lecturer: Tetiana Zhmurko).
December 22 — «From Perestroika to Independence: The New Role of Contemporary Art» (lecturer: Oksana Barshynova).

The National Art Museum of Ukraine houses the most representative collection of Ukrainian art in the world. The museum's collection includes over 40,000 exhibits, including masterpieces of Ukrainian icon painting, painting, sculpture, graphics, and media from the 11th century to the present.

Electroacoustic Workshop with Andriy Barsov

Dates: October 11, 2023
Address: Kyiv, 4 Velyka Zhytomyrska Street, Arts Department of the Lesya Ukrainka Public Library
Operating Hours: 18:00
Ticket Price: Free admission
Registration: https://shorturl.at/hZ156

Organizer(s): Lesya Ukrainka Public Library

At this event, composer Andriy Barsov will discuss the specifics of working on compositions such as Mentaculus, Nature Mort, Raves, and his live performance at EM-VISIA 2023: Hommage à Danylo Pertsov using Studio One and Ableton Live sequencers.

Andriy Barsov is a student of Hanna Havrylets and Alla Zagaikevych and recently took second place at the prestigious electroacoustic music competition in Warsaw, «Study for one hit to the earth.»

Kunsht-halle: Radio Telescopes and Neuroscience in Art

Dates: October 11, 2023
Address: Online
Operating Hours: 17:00
Ticket Price: Upon registration
Registration: https://kunsht.com.ua/registration

Organizer(s): a popular science journal Kunsht

Daniela de Paulis in front of the telescope at Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia. Source: saganet.org

The guest for this event from the «Kunsht-halle» series will be Daniela de Paulis, a media artist and licensed radio operator whose artistic practice is associated with space. Paulis will discuss her projects, the use of radio telescopes in art, neuroscience in performances, and the intersections and boundaries between science and art.

Daniela de Paulis is an artist, who has been integrating radio technologies and philosophy into her artistic projects since 2009. She is currently a resident artist at the SETI Institute (California) and a resident artist at the Green Bank Observatory (West Virginia). Paulis also collaborates with several renowned research institutions, including the European Space Agency, INAF (Italian National Institute for Astrophysics), the Donders Centre for Neurovisualization, and the University of Cambridge.

«Survivors of the Tethys Apocalypse» e xhibition

Dates: October 14, 2023
Address: Kyiv, 22 Nagirna Street, Institute of Automation
Operating Hours: from 5:00 PM
Ticket Price: Free admission

Organizer(s): Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska, Art Studios of the Kyiv Institute of Automation.

Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska in her studio. Source: instagram.com/sana_shahmuradova_tanska

Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska is a Ukrainian artist from Odesa who spent a significant part of her childhood in Podillia. In 2014, she emigrated to Toronto, where she transitioned from graphics to painting. She later moved to Kyiv, where she continues to live and work. Sana uses ink and brushes, as well as pastels for creating graphics on paper or canvas. For painting, she uses old burlap or canvas and oil. As an artist, she seeks to explore the barely researched roots of her origin through collective and personal archetypes.

The one-day exhibition «Survivors of the Tethys Apocalypse» is part of the Open Day at the Art Studios of the Kyiv Institute of Automation. It is dedicated to Sana's grandfather, Hryhorii (08.09.38–10.14.12).

In addition to Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska's exhibition, the Open Day will feature presentations of works by Maria Vlas (room 203a), Maxym Mazur (207), Yuriy Bolsa (238), Paul Maciejowsky (241), Nikita Vlasov (326a), Oleksandra Meleshko (331), Roman Pedan (331), Molly Route (404), Ihor Selemenyov (404), Yulia Boichuk (409), Halyna Abramova (410b), Nazar Ivanyuk (410b), Andriy Davidenko (410b), Eric Pawlitzky (425), Norman Behrendt (425), and others.

FANTAZERY–2023 Festival and Residency

Dates: October 20, 2023 – October 22, 2023
Address: Yasinya Village, mountain resort of Dragobrat (Rakhiv District, Zakarpattia Region)

Organizer(s): Fantazery Festival
Co-organizer(s): With financial support from the International Visegrad Fund and Goethe-Institut
Curator(s): Zhanna Kadyrova, Oksana Usachova, Dana Brezhneva, and Yevhen Kasyan

Zhanna Kadyrova's installation at the «Fantazers» festival in 2019. Source: instagram.com/fantazery.festival

This year, «Fantazery» focuses on close collaboration with the local residents of Yasinya Village and people who have found a new home there. Since February 2022, this mountain village has welcomed over a thousand internally displaced persons from various regions of Ukraine due to the ongoing conflict.

«Intended to promote cultural decentralization and the protection of the Carpathian ecosystem, the annual 'Fantazery' festival has been taking place since 2017. After last year's pause caused by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the festival team is taking on the challenge and resuming its activities in the conditions of martial law,» say the festival curators.

Before the festival, as usual, there will be an art residency. Participants in the residency include Ilya Todurkin (Mariupol), Diana Berg (Donetsk/Mariupol), Alina Yakubenko (Kyiv), Vitaliy Matukhno (Lysychansk), Maxym Robotov (Kyiv), Oleksandr Surovtsov (Mariupol), Daryna Molokoyedova (Kramatorsk–Kharkiv), Natalia Dyachenko (Kyiv), Dana Brezhneva (Kyiv), Ze Upitis (Latvia), Darina Podoltsieva (Kyiv), Bohdan Mukha (Lutsk), Mishka Bochkarev (Kyiv), Bohdan Sokur (Kyiv), Anna Kravets (Kyiv), Ivan Sautkin (Kyiv), Tetiana Rodkina (Kyiv), Oleg Levii (Khmelnytskyi), Artem Dniprovets (Lviv), Dmytro Ulyanov (Kyiv), Tetiana Kycenko (Kyiv), Yaryna Dron (Kyiv), Andriy Levchenko (Kyiv), Irina Danileyko (Kyiv), Vera Ibramova (Lviv), Hlib Burnashev (Poland), Kiryl Kanstantsinau (Poland), Erik Drab (Slovakia), Nicolas Oliver Leeman (Austria), Pavel Sterec (Czech Republic), Huminilowicz Vanda (Hungary), Arpad Nagy (Austria), Diva Butterfly (Kyiv), Lees Li (Kyiv), and others.

The art residency is curated by Zhanna Kadyrova and Danand Brezhneva. The musical part of the residency is led by Yevhen Kasyan (Dnipro), featuring Yevhen Hordeyev (Pokrovsk/Dnipro), Roma Banan (Kyiv), Khrystyna Kirik (Kyiv), Oleksiy Zinchenko (Cherkasy/Kyiv), and Scaners123 (Romania).

Representatives of the Yasinya village community. Source: instagram.com/fantazery.festival

During the residency, there will be free public events for all interested people in Yasinya Village, including:

— Film screenings;
— Theatrical performances;
— Musical performances;
— Workshops on traditional singing, dancing, sewing, mosaics, and ceramics;
— Mountain hikes.

On October 14, Yasinya Village Day, a concert by the Lviv band Pyrih&Batih and a performance by Dnipro musician Yevhen Hordeyev with his self-created genre «donbasonova» will take place. Local bands will also be featured.

As part of the festival, from October 20 to 22, presentations of the residency participants' work will be held, as well as performances by members of the Module/Dnipropop music label: Kurs Valut, Warnyakannya, Ship Her Son, Maxandruh, Monotonne, Walakos, Ihor Yalivets, and Roman Slavka. The full program of the «Fantazery» festival will be announced separately.

Children's program «Alphabet of Cinematic Art» at the Dovzhenko Centre

Dates: October 21, 2023 — December 16, 2023 and January 20, 2024 — May 18, 2024
Address: Kyiv, 1 Velyka Vasylkivska Street, Dovzhenko Centre
Operating Hours: every Saturday from 12:00 to 12:45
Ticket Price: 150 UAH

Organizer(s): Dovzhenko Centre
Curator(s): Maryna Skyrdа, Chief Art Historian at the Dovzhenko Centre Film Museum

«When we watch a movie, we forget everything. Even the fact that there is only a play of light and shadow in front of us on the screen. We hardly think that it requires a whole factory or film studio, where people from more than 200 professions are involved in the work, to create that illusion. In the material sense, cinema is thousands of kilometers of film, which are carefully stored in the FILM FUND of the Dovzhenko Centre. Our acquaintance will begin with a tour of the former film copying factory,» says the announcement of the program.

The «Alphabet of Cinematic Art» lectures tell when cinema was born and how old it is; how cinema went from black and white silent to color sound; what is the special language of film art; what is interesting about different types of cinema - art, documentary, popular science, animation (animation) — and what feelings they evoke.

A frame from the film «Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors» by Serhiy Paradzhanov. Source: dovzhenkocentre.org

The lectures are divided into two semesters:

First semester (2023):
October 21 — «Cinema: Magic of Light on the Screen or Film in a Box?» (the history of cinema from black and white silent films to color sound movies);
November 18 — «Types of Cinema: Fictional and Artistic»;
December 16 — «Working with a Film Crew: An Example».

Second semester (2024):
January 20 — «Film Genres: Western, Adventure, Action»;
February 17 — «Film Genres: Detective, Thriller, Musical»;
March 16 — «Types of Cinema: Non-Fictional/Documentary»;
April 20 — «Types of Cinema: Animation»;
May 18 — «Language of Cinematic Art: Editing, Shots, Angles, Scale, Tempo and Rhythm, Light and Shadow, Color, Sound and Music, Combining Filming, Cinematic Tricks».

Registration is available on the program's webpage.

CUTOUT Collage Festival at M17

Dates: September 15, 2023 – October 29, 2023
Address: Kyiv, 102–104 Antonovycha Street, M17 Contemporary Art Center
Operating Hours: Tue–Sun, 11:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Ticket Price: 100 UAH (discounted – 50 UAH)

Organizer(s): CUTOUT Collage Festival, M17 Contemporary Art Center
Curator(s): Annet Sagal, Katya Syta, Olga Syta

Triptych «Naive Heroism» by Mykola Dzychka. Source: instagram.com/m17art.center

The CUTOUT COLLAGE FESTIVAL exhibition at M17 presents analog, digital, and animated collages by 96 artists. The works are divided into several blocks:

— Invited international artists: Marisa Maestre, Rebecca Elizabeth (Spain), Morgan Jesse Lappin (USA), and Maïte Jane (Belgium);
— Invited Ukrainian artists, including Tiberiy Silvashi, Sasha Chichkan, Oleksiy Kondakov, and Oleksiy Malykh.
— Residents of CUTOUT COLLAGE STUDIO;
— The CUTOUT LOVERS community;
— Winning works from the open call (from Italy, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Spain, and other European countries).

The focus of this year's festival is Freedom. The curatorial team approached its interpretation through the Human Freedom Index. «This index is calculated based on the assessment of a wide range of indicators representing the level of human freedom in the main spheres of life. But whether the positions considered in the calculations of the indexes are about freedom remains a question. After all, at the core of the theory of the social contract, which emerged during the Enlightenment, is the belief that the human tendency to surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for the guarantee of certain rights is the 'state of nature.' So which lack of freedom is 'organic' to human nature, and which depends on external factors?» the curators ask.

In addition to the exhibition, the CUTOUT festival presents a program of public events. Until October 28, 2023, M17 will host:

— Curator-led tours by Katya Syta and Olga Syta;
— Collage workshops by Maria Shapranova and Katya Syta;
— Lecture «Sergii Parajanov» by art historian Diana Klochko;
— Screening of the documentary film about artist Ray Johnson, «How to Draw a Bunny» (in English);
— Artist-talks with residents of CUTOUT COLLAGE STUDIO.

Ukrainian Projects Abroad

«Ukrainian Dreamers: The Kharkiv School of Photography» e xhibition

Dates: October 12, 2023 — January 7, 2024
Address: Hollerpl. 1, 38440 Wolfsburg, Germany
Operating Hours: Tue–Sun, 11:00–18:00
Ticket Price: 10/8 Euros

Organizer(s): Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Co-organizer(s): with the support of the Ukrainian Institute in Germany and Goethe Institut, with the assistance of Voloshyn Gallery
Curator(s): Sergiy Lebedynskyy (assistants: Karla Wiggering and Olexandra Osadcha)

Yevgeny Pavlov's collage «Alternative», 1985. Source: kunstmuseum.de

The exhibition «Ukrainian Dreamers: The Kharkiv School of Photography» is created based on the archives evacuated from Kharkiv in the spring of 2022. «It is an impressive collection of some 5,000 photographs and more than 70,000 negatives—a total of almost 2,000 kilograms of material—that Sergiy Lebedynskyy, Director of the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP), had transported to Wolfsburg a few weeks after the beginning of the Russian war of aggression,» as stated in the event announcement.

Exhibition participants: Sergiy Bratkov, Herman Drukov, Viktor and Sergiy Kochetov, Bella Logachova, Oleg Malovany, Boris Mikhailov, Yevgeniy Pavlov, Roman Pyatkovka, Daniil Revkovskyy and Andriy Rachynskyy, Yuriy Rupin, the SOSka group (Mykola Ridnyi, Sergiy Popov, Hanna Kryvenko), Oleksandr Suprun, and the Shylo group (Vladyslav Krasnoshchok and Sergiy Lebedynskyy).

The exhibition opening is on October 13th. On the same day at 14:00 local time in Germany, several events will take place as part of the public program:
— A conversation with Boris Mikhailov and Yevgeniy Pavlov.
— A presentation by MOKSOP director Sergiy Lebedynskyy about the institution's creation.
— A lecture by Olena Chervonyk titled «Color as Defiance: The Kharkiv School of Photography and its Aesthetic Dissent.»

The Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP) is the first Ukrainian museum of contemporary photography, founded in 2018 by photographers Sergiy Lebedynskyy and Vladyslav Krasnoshchok, along with art historians Olexandra Osadcha and Nadiia Bernard-Kovalchuk.

Kyiv Biennial`s main exhibition in Vienna

Dates: October 17, 2023 – December 17, 2023
Address: Scherzergasse 1a, 1020 Wien, Österreich
Ticket price: Admission is free

Organizer(s): Visual Culture Research Center, tranzit.at
Curator(s): Serge Klymko, Hedwig Saxenhuber and Georg Schöllhammer

Augarten Contemporary. Source: 2023.kyivbiennial.org

The main exhibition of this year’s Kyiv Biennial will take place at Augarten Contemporary in Vienna. The Ukrainian team emphasizes the close connection between Vienna and Ukraine, Austria and the Kyiv Biennial. So, for example, in 2016, the «schools» program of the first Kyiv Biennale of 2015 — a large-scale exhibition project called «Kyiv School» — was held in Vienna. This year, the organizers decided to hold the biennial in the format of «an international event of solidarity — against everything and despite the circumstances and logic of war, which threatens to engulf the entire public sphere.»

«We decided not to group works under a given name, which always imposes certain restrictions. Geopolitical rupture and dislocation are the background of this biennale, as well as the reality that connects its content. The strength, depth and poignancy, and even the poetics of the collected works should speak for themselves: on the one hand, these are artworks and interventions, installations and documentary investigations embedded in the context of the catastrophic reality of war, on the other hand, works that explore possible strategies for exiting the current dead end of war, authoritarianism and colonialism,» the curators of the project tell.

The Kyiv Biennial is an international forum for art, knowledge, and politics that brings together exhibitions and discussion platforms. The Biennale applies an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of the humanities, socially engaged art, and political activism to make sense of the key issues of the modern world.Events within the Kyiv Biennale 2023 are also taking place in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, Warsaw, Lublin and Antwerp.

Augarten Contemporary is an art complex, designed by architect Georg Lippert, that was built in the 1950s to provide sculptor Gustinus Ambrosi with a place to work, live and exhibit. Three years after Ambrosi’s death, in 1975, the complex was turned into a public museum dedicated to the monographic presentation of the artist’s oeuvre. At the turn of the millennium, the landmarked ensemble was revitalized by the architectural team zottlbuda and taken over by the Belvedere museum as a center for contemporary art. In 2012–2017, the complex hosted TBA21’s activities in an institutional cooperation with the Belvedere.

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Author
Ivan Skoryna