Exhibition ZBOR. Belarusian art movement
31 March 2016 — 6 May 2016
On March 31, at 6 pm, IZOLYATSIA opens the exhibition ZBOR. Belarusian art movement.
Despite differing political benchmarks, Belarus and Ukraine are passing through similar social transformations related to the national identity and cultural self-identification. However, the cultural exchange between two countries remains limited and takes place sporadically. Ukrainian contemporary art has not yet been widely represented in Belarus, while the Ukrainians are still largely unaware of Belarusian art’s evolution over the last decades.
For the first time in Ukraine, the exhibition ZBOR. Belarusian art movement (bel. zbor — collection) presents an overview of Belarusian contemporary art. It is a key event, which enables understanding of how Belarusian cultural space has transformed over the last 25 years.
ZBOR encompasses the results of a research led by KALEKTAR platform that was established by a group of artists and curators to study and preserve the newest history of Belarusian art. The exhibition is based on forty key art pieces, which, according to the experts’ council of KALEKTAR platform, have determined the main trends and directions in the development of the Belarusian contemporary art. The exhibition includes over 200 exhibit items such as documentary photographs, scholarly essays, as well as original works by Belarusian artists, created between the 1980s and today. One of the central pieces of the exhibition is a big media presentation comprising original video works by over twenty authors and rare archival footage of performances and artistic actions. More than fifty Belarusian artists, residing in the country or abroad, are represented at the exhibition.
Media partners
Over the last decades, Belarusian art has experienced various transformations. During this time, many important events took place in art community, influencing cultural development in the country. However, these processes were neither conceptualised nor systematised by professional art critics in Belarus. As a result, the informational and institutional vacuum was filled largely by the imitations created by bureaucratic and propaganda structures to spread their control over — still independent — contemporary art. Moreover, the absence of the academic discourse and research in archiving of the contemporary art caused the loss of many significant works related in particular to the interdisciplinary and performative practices, video and new media.
This is what motivated the artists and curators to build the newest collection of Belarusian art within KALEKTAR platform. The need emerged to specify the new principles and approaches to the creation of a contemporary collection, which could encompass the multitude of current artistic practices and form an organic part of today’s informational flux.
Guided by the same ideas, with the exhibition ZBOR. Belarusian art movement IZOLYATSIA sets a new phase in the study of Ukrainian contemporary art. The foundation aims to systematise the key artworks and analyse the existing studies carried out since Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. The open platform will embody an overview of the researches, a database of Ukrainian artists and the works they created, as well as texts on the development of the artistic directions and practices in Ukraine. This platform is supposed to serve as a basis for future exhibition, which will showcase the key phenomena and artworks in Ukrainian contemporary art.
Curators: Andrei Dureika, Maxim Tyminko.
Participants: Siarhiej Babareka, Israel Basov, Belarusian Climate group, Bergamot group, Vladimir Tsesler / Sergey Voichenko, Anna Chkolnikova, Zhanna Gladko, Janna Grak, Oxana Gourinovitch, Mikhail Gulin, Lena Davidovich, Evelina Domnich / Dmitry Gelfand, Andrei Dureika, Sergey Kiryuschenko, Artur Klinov, Alexander Komarov, Alexej Koschkarow, Andrei Liankevich, Lipovy Cvet group, Alexey Lunev, Vika Mitrichenko, Galina Moskaleva / Vladimir Shakhlevich, Marina Naprushkina, Ales Pushkin, group Revision, Vitaly Rozhkov (Bismark), Ludmila Rusova, Igor Savchenko, Olga Sazykina, Sergey Shabohin, Antonina Slobodchikova, Anna Sokolova, Tamara Sokolova, Leon Tarasewicz, Oleg Tcherny, Igor Tishin, Maxim Tyminko / Gleb Choutov / Maja Ilic, Vasiliy Vasiliev, Alexey Velikjanin, Oleg Yushko / Kirill Lubenec.
Exhibition organisers: KALEKTAR research platform of Belarusian contemporary art and IZOLYATSIA foundation
About KALEKTAR
KALEKTAR (bel. kalektar – collector) is a research platform and a web portal for Belarusian contemporary art kalektar.org. It is a non-governmental independent cultural organisation run by volunteers including artists, curators and art historians. The platform is positioned as a tool for archiving, analysing and promoting Belarusian contemporary art.
Platform co-founders: Sergey Kiryuschenko and Sergey Shabokhin.
Experts’ group: Tania Arcimović, Aleksei Borisionok, Andrei Dureikа, Valentina Kiseleva, Alexey Lunev, Lena Prents.
Manager: Pavel Preobrazhensky.
Authors of the texts: Andrei Dureika, Maxim Tyminko, Sergey Shabokhin.
Co-authors: Tania Arcimović, Tatiana Bembel, Aleksei Borisionok, Anton Borisenka, Olga Bubich, Lyudmila Voropai, Paulina Vitushchanka, Irina Herasimovich, Aliona Glukhova, Natallia Harachaya, Ilona Dergach, Vadim Dobrovolsкy, Andrei Dureika, Tatyana Kondratenko, Larisa Mikhnevich, Lena Prents, Olga Ryibchinskaya, Anna Samarskaya, Alexander Sarna, Sasha Semak, Tanya Setsko, Anna Sokolova, Irina Solomatina, Olga Sosnovskaya, Kristina Stashkevich, Svetlana Ulanovskaya, Larisa Filkinshtein, Olga Shparaga, Vitaly Schutsy, Oleg Yushko.
ZBOR (essays collection)
INDEX (information on artists)
Opening: March, 31, 2016, 6 pm
Address: 8 Naberezhno-Luhova Street, Second Floor.
Schedule:
March 31 — May 6, 2016, Monday to Sunday, 12 pm — 8 pm
Project partners
