IZOLYATSIA Day in Soledar

On the 11th and 12th of June 2021, the IZOLYATSIA Foundation will celebrate IZOLYATSIA Day. This celebration will consist of a series of diverse events and the opening of the renovated office in Soledar. This year, IZOLYATSIA will for the first time mark the seventh anniversary of its exile from Donetsk closer to the city, namely in Soledar, where the organisation has worked over the course of the past yea. This was preceded by a long period of preparation and researсh.

At the opening, there will be the premiere of a video mapping by the Carbon collective, a presentation and series of screenings by the Docudays UA Cinema Club / Gurtobus. This summer, Soledar will be Gurtobus’s permanent home, giving city residents an opportunity to watch the most interesting documentary films from the programme of the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. There will also be several educational events and the presentation of A Soledar Botanical Album, by Grounding resident Bohdana Vojtenko.

A classic monotown with a population of around 11,000 and Artyomsol as an economic and semantic keynote became the place where IZOLYATSIA plans to ground itself and to launch cultural and educational projects in collaboration with the local community. The focal points of the Foundation’s work in Soledar, which flow organically from its previous experience and projects it has undertaken, are cultural and economic development and the strengthening of the local community’s social cohesion.  Through cultural projects such as the Grounding short-term residency series for Ukrainian artists and the accompanying educational programme, the Foundation invites residents of Soledar and the Soledar Amalgamated Hromada to participate in contemporary artistic practices not only in the capacity of observers, but also that of contributors.

The residency of the Open Group collective, who used local youth into the shooting of their film and helped them to shoot their first music video, can serve as a shining example of this. Or Astian Rey’s work on his sculpture Shark-People, which local activists helped him to create. Currently, there is an extremely limited range of leisure activities in the city: there is the House of Culture and the City Library. IZOLYATSIA is successfully working alongside these institutions, and has already arranged projects aimed at the development of a joint cultural programme in the Soledar Amalgamated Hromada alongside city authorities and the House of Culture. The Foundation’s aim is to show that culture can be not only an interesting leisure activity, but can also serve as a major economic player and be an alternative to heavy industry and manufacturing, creating a network of cultural institutions, new workplaces and developing the creative economy.

Programme of events

On the 11th and 12th of June, an exhibition of Andrii Dostliev’s and Lia Dostlieva artistic project Licking War Wounds will be available.

All events will take place at the following address: IZOLYATSIA, 1 Parkova Vulitsa, Soledar.

11 June

• 15:00-16:00 — Screen printing workshop with Anastasia Khadzhinova. 

• 17:00 — Lecture: Land Art 101: how people create art from leaves, stones and branches with Valeriia Buradzhieva. 

• 17:40 — Workshop: Photographic walk. Creating our own postcards of Soledar, with Valeriia Buradzhieva.

• 21:00-22:30 — Mining: a video mapping by the Carbon collective, performance by Radio Jah (streamed online).

12 June

• 11:00-12:30 — Lecture: Media-art practices in post-industrial locations (Oleksandra Khalepa, Carbon)

• 15:00-16:00 — Screen printing workshop with Anastasia Khadzhinova.

• 18:00 — A presentation of artist Bohdana Voitenko, Grounding resident’s, project.

• 20:30-22:30 — Presentation: Docu / Club Gurtobus. Screening and discussion of the documentary films Giovanna and the ballet on water (17 min.), Champion (19 min.), A Blossom through Tears (38 min.)