Cultural Itinerary for the week of June 26 – July 3
Each week ART UKRAINE sets the cultural itinerary and takes you on a tour of cultural events that are set to open or have just recently opened. This week’s tour is packed: our schedule begins with a cultural advocacy event and ends up on a visit to a number of arts projects from locations all over Ukraine.
Today (June 26), IZOLYATSIA, the Donetsk-based cultural center, has organized a protest near the Presidential Administration building. The action has two goals: to get the country’s newly-minted Executive Branch to officially recognize the role and place of culture in its Administration, and to call to President Poroshenko’s attention the need for protection of cultural institutions located in the war-zone.
This evening at the Mystetskyi Arsenal will feature an “EVENING of the AVANT-GARDE” as a part of its ongoing “THE AVANT-GARDE SCENE” project. The evening’s program includes silent film with live musical accompaniment, jazz, and poetry. The evening is doubling as a fund-raiser, with 50% of ticket proceeds going to help refugee children and families driven from the war-zone in Eastern Ukraine.
The evening’s program finds its inspiration in the avant-garde artwork of the early 20th century, and features a screening of the 1924 silent film classic “He Who Gets Slapped”, presented with live, original musical accompaniment by the American trio, ALLOY ORCHESTRA. The evening begins at 6:00 p.m. with a talk by art critic Dmytro Gorbachev on “The Scenography of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde”.
On June 27th, Taras Shevchenko National Museum will see the Opening of their international exhibit “My Prosto Ishly…”, celebrating the bicentennial of the writer’s birth. Ukrainian artists Petro Bevza and Mykola Zhuravel offer another take on the Shevchenko, interpreting his life as something more than that of a poet, but as a harbinger of what was to come and as the inspiration of a nation.
Also opening that night at the Odessa Museum of Contemporary Art is the exhibit: “Volodymyr Kabachenko. Neobaroque. Experience”. The project takes a fresh look at the Ukrainian trans avant-garde neobaroque as encompassed in the art work of Volodymyr Kabachenko.
The following day, June 27th, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Agnieszka Tarasiuk, lead curator at the Xavier Dunikowsky Sculpture Museum at National Museum at Warsaw, will deliver a lecture on “20th Century Polish Memorials. The Past, the Contemporary, and the Not-Yet-Built”.
Friday the 27th also sees at Ternopil’s “BunkerMus” the Opening of a solo show of Ihor Nerus’s artwork titled “Colors of Our Time”.
On Saturday the 28th, Ukrainian Constitution Day, Kyiv’s infamous Motherland Monument – the Rodina-Mat – will be lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag from 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. The light-show will also give dynamic illumination to several of the statues in the Memorial Park’s monumental ensemble. The focus of the event is to illustrate long-held Ukrainian ideals and values with the assistance of modern technology and viewed through the lens of contemporary art.
On Wednesday, July 2nd, Mystetskyi Arsenal’s “Small Gallery” will open the media-art exhibit RECT_STRUCT: emotions/algoritm, created by the artist team of Ujif_notfound and Dmytro Kornienko. Cinema projections and musical offerings by Ujif_notfound will run throughout the exhibit.
Other, recently opened events:
The Donetsk Art Group’s Zhuzhalka in Closer’s “Five Minutes to Midnight” reveals the history of the town of Rzhavchyna (eng., “rust”), with each text, image, and sound lending to the overall narrative. The exhibit is conducted with the help of the IZOLYATSIA Cultural Platform.
Mikita Kravtsov’s “The Matrix of Time: Kinetic Pictures” in which the artists examines motion, is ongoing at the KhudGraf Gallery. He takes a measured look at the unattainability of the American dream of individualism, and the isolation of an artificially created space.
