Water as displacement
OnCurating Project Space, Zurich
24.02. 2023
Featuring works by Border Forensics, Antoine Félix Bücher, María José Crespo, Zoya Laktionova, Johanna Locher, Ornella Ostapenko and UNITED for Intercultural Action
Curated by: Elif Carrier, Anastasiia Biletska, Rosela del Bosque, Marina Donina, Katerina Leontidou and Anna Sorokovaya.
‘water as displacement’ is the third chapter in ‘stories of water’, a project presenting a series of interventions ranging from screenings and performance to installations and seminars that consider the topic of water using different approaches. Over its four chapters, ‘stories of water’ explores the multifaceted formal qualities of water, the complex symbiotic entanglements in which humans and water coexist, as well as the politics of water in our current globalized reality. Throughout this third chapter, we are looking into the politics of water, borders, expropriation and self-governance.
Collectively, the works presented investigate the geopolitical complexities and their respective impacts on our oceans, rivers, and lands. The term ‘floating bodies’ coined by architect, researcher and urban designer Adrian Lahoud conceptualizes and ties together issues which touch upon both the ecological and the political. Lahoud describes floating bodies as being related to the polluting atmospheric particles which flow from North to South, as well as the human beings which migrate from South to North – often having to cross large bodies of water in order to do so. The notion of ‘floating bodies’ is what connects the ecological and political predicaments in places such as the Rio Grande, the US-Mexico border, the Baltic Sea, the Libyan coast, the Azov Sea coast in Eastern Ukraine, and Antarctica.
Preserving the Shape curated by the artists Olena Newkryta & Anastasiya Yarovenko presents art works that approach notions of collective action and subjectivity, material and immaterial heritage, and its survival. It focuses on various ways of how a collective, communal or cultural identity could be nourished in the context of current russian imperial warfare, destruction of living environments and public institutions. In contrast to cultural assets that can be preserved artificially via conservation or museum displays, community is a fragile and precarious entity that becomes and remains only through forms of mutual care, social plasticity and solidarity. The exhibition brings together documentary and conceptual works by Ukrainian artists that are part of a self-organised world-making and embody an utopian or bygone collectivity.
«Fast. Easy. Precarious» 05.11 — 25.11.2022 Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv
Participants: Valeria Zubatenko, Borys Kashapov, Nikita Kravtsov, Anna Sorokovaya, Iryna Stasiuk, David Chichkan, eeefff group, SOSka group. Curator — Hanna Tsyba.
Modern life is increasingly associated with the use of digital platforms and mobile applications to order services, find housing, work or a partner, taxi service or food delivery. The platforms offer users simplicity, flexibility and efficiency— in one click you can place an order or find a customer, choose a service or number of working hours, work and consume of your choice. However, very often the convenient interface of digital platform hides the schemes of labour operation and the lack of security guarantees for both customers and employees, and the freedom promised by them in practice is dictated by the algorithm.
The spread of the platform, or so-called gig economy, is today perhaps the most threatening global trend in the labour market. Gig economy destroys the established structures of labour relations using the model of fictitious self-employment, based on digital platforms. This implies the most precarious conditions: lack of health insurance, social guarantees and permanent employment, payment for work performed, operation of employees’ own equipment, use of algorithms to coordinate and monitor their actions.
Dismantelment 20.09 — 26.o9.2019 Nadie Nunce Nadi No gallery
within the frame of Hybrid festival, Madrid
Artists: Taras Kovach, Alex Bykov / Lev Shevchenko, Oleksiy Radynskiy and Maksym Trebukhov
Curator: Anna Sorokovaya
«Dismantelment» project addresses the topic of urban landscape changes that are taking place in the context of current economic and political transformations. The subject of the project’s research is the obvious and hidden violence in the urban environment, various forms of seizure of public space, as well as private, sensual, bodily experiences. The experience of the collective and its value in the context of the atomization of society. Work with the cultural and architectural heritage of the Soviet period.
Decommuni_ation 25.01 — 08.03.2019 Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin
Artists: Roshanak Amini, Kristina Bekker, Merle Dammhayn, Abie Franklin, Yaroslav Futymskyi, Alex Hennig, Kamila Juruć, Eva Karduck, Pavel Khailo, Nina Langbehn, Elena Lystarkhova, METASITU (Liva Dudareva & Eduardo Cassina), Denys Pankratov, Richard Paul, Maxine Puorro, Jan Robert von Raußendorf, Katharina Sophie Reinsbach, Belen Resnikowski, Daniil Revkovskiy & Andriy Rachinskiy, Valeria Schiller, Katharina Shafiei-Nasab, Manuel Strube, Beata Anna Targosz, Leo Trotsenko, Nadine Trushina, Kateryna Tykhonenko, Illia Yakovenko, Olga Zovskaya
Curatorial group: Christoph Wachter, Mathias Jud, Anna Sorokovaya, Taras Kovach
ДЕКОМУНІ_АЦІЯ / DECOMMUNI_ATION is a research multimedia collaboration project which took place in Kyiv and Berlin. The group of artists did research of cultural heritage of the modern age, the destruction processes of monuments and sights, the production of art in different political regimes, artistic freedoms and its limitations.
The core idea was to create a collaboration around two artistic communities and art schools from Berlin and Kyiv, that have differences in educational and artistic principals but share similar historical backgrounds including decommunzational processes. The processes of decommunization came to both cities in many shapes and forms and shaped their cultural landscapes. Renaming streets, demolishing or restoring monuments are the first row consequences results of the profound social, communication and cultural changes resulting from decommunization process. The project title is a word play between decommunization and decommunication written in ukrainian cyrillic alphabet where a missing letter can be replaced with another one bringing another meaning to the term.
Partners of the project: The weissensee school of art and design in Berlin, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz / Berlin, National Academy of Art, Soshenko 33 / Kyiv.
within the frame of Warsaw Under Construction festival, Warsaw
Artists: Babi Badalov, Oksana Briukhovetska, Oleksandr Burlaka, Oleksiy Bykov, Davyd Chychkan, Phil Collins, Kseniya Hnylytska, Nikita Kadan, Taras Kamennoy, Gal Kirn & Fokus Grupa, Dana Kosmina, Marginal Act, Marina Naprushkina, Valentyna Petrova, Aleka Polis, Serhiy Popov and Mykola Ridnyi, Oliver Ressler, Santiago Sierra, Anna Sorokovaya, Hito Steyerl, Łukasz Surowiec in collaboration with Marta Romankiv & Oleksandra Ovsyannikova, TV Kryzys, Piotr Wysocki, Alina Yakubenko, Florian Yuriev, Artur Żmijewski.
Curatorial group: VCRC collective
Neighbours was initiated by the Warsaw Under Construcion festival (10th edition) and was curated by the Ukrainian collective VCRC (Anna Kravets, Yustyna Kravchuk, Oleksii Radynskyi, Ruslana Koziienko, Serhiy Klymko, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Nataliia Neshevets, Oksana Briukhovetska, Ganna Tsyba) together with curator from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Szymon Maliborski. It is important to mention a few words about VCRC: it was founded in 2008 and it is a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic and activist communities. Since its foundation, VCRC curated several exhibitions, organized public lectures, talks and discussion and took part in research programs. They were also organizing The School of Kyiv – Kyiv Biennial 2015 and The Kyiv International – Kyiv Biennial 2017 which is considered to be one of the most important events in the region.
Shape The Unknown 5.08 — 15.08.2017 by Termokiss / Toestand / Happy Positiv / Soshenko 33 documenta 14, Kassel
During a two-week residency at the Nordstadtpark, four associations from Kosovo, Belgium, and Switzerland that work with abandoned buildings and (public) spaces, together with similar initiatives based in Kassel, will shape a “collective village of ideas.” The foundation of this village is based on a common work method encompassing productivity, collaboration, and openness, as developed in previous collaborations between the four associations.
Framed by the 100 days of documenta in Kassel, the renowned documenta setting, the main focus is on the process of creation. The outcome is an unknown condition, shaped and defined by a joint effort of a temporary community in the city of Kassel. We’ll be working on a scarce piece of land, within a limited time span. Questions—typical for an urban context—will inevitably arise. However, the nature of this process-oriented project, as well as the presence of the participants’ different backgrounds and cultures, provides an interesting breeding ground to explore different paths and answers to these time-space scarcities.
The final shape of the project will therefore be an expression of a shared vision of the arts and society today. It will be spatially manifested in a building, a pavilion, or a village open for use and interpretation by local creatives.
TEXTUS. Embroidery, textile, feminism 08.03 – 09.04.2017 Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv
Artists: Oksana Briukhovetska, Kseniya Gnylytska, Alina Kleytman, Alina Kopytsya, Tetiana Kornieyeva, Iryna Kudrya, Valentyna Petrova, Anna Shcherbyna, Sewing cooperative «Shvemy», Anna Sorokovaya, Iryna Stasyuk, Olesya Trofimenko, Sofia Vremennaya, Anna Zvyagintseva
Curator: Oksana Briukhovetska
The words “textile” and “text” come from the Latin word textus, meaning “fabric,” “connection,” and “interwoven.” Our culture evolved in such a way that it was mostly men who interwove words to create texts, as words and language became carriers of power and law. The interweaving of threads was reduced to “women’s” work, an unexceptional craft compared with the intellectual “weaving of words.” Its function – to decorate, provide warmth and comfort, was synonymous with the role assigned to women in traditional cultures. Despite the technical complexity and visual richness of some textile and embroidery techniques, because of the word “feminine” these works were not considered on par with painting.
This attitude towards “female” techniques is consonant with the attitude towards women’s labor in general. Women earn less than men, and housework and caring for children, which in most cases falls on the shoulders of women, is unpaid and often goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
Embroidery and textile are becoming increasingly popular mediums in contemporary art world. But in conservative societies, embroidery and textile are still seen as having decorative functions and are presented as women’s hobbies where you copy ready patterns, thus having a somewhat discriminatory connotation.
That is why “female” techniques became important representations of feminist art. The exhibition TEXTUS. Embroidery, Textile, Feminism demonstrates how these techniques, by becoming mediums for reflection and critical expression, are undermining the hierarchy of artistic practices.
The exhibit explores this layer of art through the work of contemporary Ukrainian women artists. Presented through embroidery and textile, viewers are offered to read it as a narrative, returning to the original meaning of the word textus.
The works presented in this exhibit and the accompanying lectures and discussions will focus on women’s rights in Ukraine and the post-Soviet space, the issues of women’s labor, and identity in art and society.
Slavkeramprodukt. Working with material 29.12.2016 — 28.01.2017 the Local History Museum, Slovyansk, Ukraine
Curatorial group: Anna Sorokovaya, Taras Kovach
The «Slavkeramprodukt. Working with material» project is a short research into Slovyansk ceramic production as a social phenomenon and an attempt to rethink the holdings and space of the city museum. Unique natural raw material and ceramics production based on it determined one of the key areas of Slovyansk residents’ activities for a long time. This activity took different forms in each historical period. Pre-revolutionary mass commercial production of pottery and tiles was developed in late 19th — early 20th century. Industrialization of the region and country led to huge Insulator plant facilities in Soviet times. After state-owned factories stopped their work, commercial production of consumer goods began to flourish in the 90s, as a survival strategy. The nature of production varied depending on the overall political and economic situation. How did ceramics affect people’s lives, their everyday routine and external relations? What determines the quality of contemporary ceramics?How can the museum be useful to the city, where there are hundreds of private ceramic businesses, but which lacks quality art training?
Part of the exhibition includes the works of N.A.Maksymchenko, artist who was born in Slovyansk in 1914, studied in Kharkiv and worked in Moscow. The largest collection of Maksymchenko’s decorative ceramics of 1960 is represented in the Local History Museum.
The stained-glass window of the early 1970’s manufactured at Donetsk Art Plant has been exhibited to the public for the first time over the last 20 years.
De ne de 29.01 — 31.01.2016 Institute of Scientific, Technical and Economic Information — «UFO» building, Kyiv
Common Frontier
12.09.15 — 01.11.15
within the frame of Kyiv Biennial — The School of Kyiv
Soshenko 33 Art Studios, Kyiv
Curatorial group: Anna Sorokovaya, Taras Kovach, Alina Yakubenko, Anton Lapov
Artists: Mitya Churikov, Sasha Dolgyi, Dobrynia Ivanov, Taras Kovach, Anton Lapov, Larion Lozovyi, Anna Shcherbyna, Anna Sorokovaya, Alina Yakubenko, Dmytriy Wulffius, Oleksandr Yeltsyn
Historically, thanks to a number of factors including their peripheral location at the city-edge and the authorities’ difficulty in exerting control, the Soshenko 33 Art Studios have long been a unique “space of freedom” and are remembered as such by studio residents from different generations. This place became a space for informal communication and the realisation of more ideologically free artistic practices. In the post-Soviet period, a new artistic community formed here, but at the same time the studios faced the threat of being destroyed. This conflict provided the impulse to look actively for defensive mechanisms, which evolved from operating in utmost secrecy (previously the most effective method for evading control) to protests and events, publicity and openness. Carrying out a project within the framework of a biennial of contemporary art is seen by the initiators as the continuation of this practice of activism. All active participants engaged in a process of critically rethinking historical legacy at local and global scale, as well as seeking ways to implement change.
