Ukrainian Art Today – A Conversation with Alex Fisher. The Long Read.
Ukraine, on the border between east and west, and for a long time part of the Soviet Union and before that the Russian Empire, celebrated 30 years of independence in 2021. Prominent contemporary artists include photographer Boris Mikhailov, abstract art pioneer Kazimir Malevich, and from the Modernist period Sonia Delaunay, who, like several artists in the exhibition Dedication. Traces and Tactics, recently at Kristianstads konsthall in Sweden, had the experience of being born in an empire that disappeared during her lifetime. However, Ukraine was there all the time, as a shadow culture with a long history, under the layers of hegemonic rule.
There’s a strong historical link between Ukraine and Sweden; this link is particularly strong with Kristianstad. Following Sweden’s swift expansion under Charles XII in the first decade of the 1700s– and its defeat in Eastern Europe, a group of Cossacks settled in the garrison town of Kristianstad, headed by the hetman Pylyp Orlyk, a Zaporozhian Cossack who dedicated his life to fighting the Russian Empire and wrote his nation’s first constitution in 1710. Sometimes referred to as the Constitution of Bendery, it is one of the earliest examples of a constitution that champions the principle of distribution of power, later worked out by Montesquieu and a keystone of the 1786 Constitution of the United States.
Yet again, Ukraine is a pawn in a geopolitical game, but what is going on in the art scene and in the minds of its artists? The vast Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after Russia, and still much is to be discovered of its contemporary culture.
We talked to curator and writer Alex Fisher, who co-organized the show at Kristianstads konsthall, a municipal kunsthall in the south of Sweden, and invited seven artists and artist groups from different regions of Ukraine to participate.
Fisher serves as artistic coordinator at Milvus Artistic Research Center (Knislinge, Sweden) and is in the midst of pursuing a master’s in Design Studies with a trajectory in Power and Place at Harvard University. A curator and writer, his research focuses on the lyricism and lingo of the built environment as well as (re)formations of legacy in post-socialist contexts. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Economics and History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania and is a former Fulbright scholar to Ukraine.
Tell us about your experiences living in Ukraine for nearly two years and about the art scene that you got to know?
I had the pleasure of calling the Ukrainian capital Kyiv home from fall 2019 through spring 2021. I did so with the support of a Fulbright research scholarship, through which I worked in affiliation with two arts organizations: Mystetskyi Arsenal, a state-funded cultural institution situated across from the Orthodox pilgrimage site Pechersk Lavra, andIzolyatsia, a private arts foundation that was forced to relocate from the East Ukrainian city Donetsk to the capital following its campus’ occupation by separatists in 2014.
From a cultural perspective, it is a moment of flux in Ukraine, with many artistic platforms coming into being and those already in existence adapting their ambitions in correspondence with Ukraine’s halting transition towards becoming a consolidated democracy as well as the country’s commitment to articulating its sovereignty.
Three defining traits of Ukrainian art now are 1) ephemerality, 2) participatory engagement, and 3) cross-generational dialogue. Regarding ephemerality, presence is a core principle of Ukrainian contemporary art, as many of the most exciting projects are those that happen over the course of a day or night in a pop-up space or the living room of an artist’s flat. On the topic of participatory engagement, a significant number of the country’s established artists prioritize interactivity, with collective experiences being privileged over individual encounters. Finally, cross-generational dialogue is a major characteristic, as those born after the collapse of the Soviet Union negotiate that empire’s irksome legacy in conversation with peers born prior, often to contentious ends.
What is on the minds of young artists in Ukraine?
Well, for one, how to define ‘young artist’ is an item of heated debate in the Ukrainian artistic community, as—perhaps more than is healthy—there are many competitions to name the country’s best young artist, with the most prominent being the PinchukArtCentre Prize, whose 2022 edition Dana Kavelina, a participating artist in Dedication. Traces and Tactics, was just nominated for.
Usually, competitions to name the best young artist have an age limit of thirty-five. The shortfalls of this method of interpreting ‘young artist’ are being queried by a cast of artists who have entered the arts later in life after pursuing another career, as exemplified by Petro Ryaska, another participating artist in Dedication, who is represented by The Naked Room, one of the top galleries in the country.
Alas, to answer the question more directly, some subjects at top-of-mind for young artists in Ukraine include a) the promises and perils of the education system, b) the prominence of memory politics, and c) the foggy future. Regarding the former, public arts education emphasizes technique, often at the expense of concept; this leads many to conclude that the public arts education is out-of-step with the contemporary moment. A parallel network of private arts education centers that prioritize a concept-driven approach are proliferating, though their courses come at a relatively steep cost and are thus inaccessible to a large proportion of the population. Next, memory politics can be found everywhere you look in Ukrainian art now, partly owing to the fact that the current climate permits interrogations of successes and traumas from the past that would hitherto been subject to censorship. The fixation on what has happened previously is also understood when positioned against Ukraine’s foggy future, as the country’s territorial integrity is continuously tested and its geopolitical position remains only partially formulated.
Could you tell us how you selected the artists?
The process of selecting the artists occurred over the course of a series of conversations between Milvus Artistic Research Center (MARC), which specializes in performance and where I serve as artistic coordinator, and Kristianstads konsthall. For MARC, a primary motivation was settling on a group of artists whose practices conversed with principles of performance in compelling ways. Kristianstads konsthall, attached to Regionmuseet Skåne, possesses a fantastic capacity to situate contemporary art in a historical continuum, a skill that was especially exciting to tap in this exhibition, given the centuries-old connection between Kristianstad and Ukraine, by virtue of its being the adopted hometown of Pylyp Orlyk, a Ukrainian political leader who lived in the city for five years in the early 1700s.
The selected group of artists are mixed along many lines, including age, background, and preferred working method. They hail from cities and towns across the country. There are looping bonds between those included; for example, the artist Lada Nakonechna previously taught 12345678910 Studio, whose works feature in adjacent galleries in the exhibition. Further illustrating this point, Nikita Kadan and Dana Kavelina have mutually mentored one another; their works are also shown side-by-side.
In selecting the artists, I was also curious about the effects that their separate levels of past experience working abroad would have on their participation in this show. One subset of artists have extensive, cross-continental experience exhibiting their work. Another subset has previously shown their work in Central and Eastern Europe. And a third subset had yet to show their work abroad before this exhibition. Accordingly, there were different pools of expectation being tapped in production, installation, and presentation.
In 2020, you participated in a talk we co-arranged and you invited artist Vladimir Miladinović from Serbia. The other participant was Irena Popiashvili and artist Nino Kvrivishvili from Georgia – on the theme Memory, Legacy, Collaborations. I feel the exhibition theme continues this investigation of memory, how history is made and written. Could you talk a bit about how you, and how the artists in the show, interpret and use the word dedication?
I enjoyed how our talk in 2020 delved into the intricate topic of who authors memory, and how memory moves from the individual mind to the collective domain. In preparing Dedication. Traces and Tactics, I returned to this topic, thinking about how authors often include a dedication to someone at the beginning of their stories, whether it be a spouse, relative, or teacher. Such dedications can also be to places that assumed power or became persuasive at a particular point in time, or to a cause—some movement, struggle, or telling of events.
In his installation “Harvest of Modernity” (2021), Yaroslav Futymskyi offers his interpretation of dedication. One part of the installation is a set of envelopes upon which the artist has affixed index prints of analog photographs. They are laid out in a series of rows in a vitrine. The unused envelopes were found by the artist in a waste bin a few months prior to the exhibition. They date to the late Soviet period, as evidenced by the sickle and star pattern printed in their interior—traces of the empire discarded and discovered some thirty years after its fall. The index prints of analog photographs depict private moments, details from the street, and the artist’s friends, many of whom themselves are artists, poets and performers. He has inserted these candid images where stamps depicting heads of state and world wonders usually go.
Futymskyi’s installation is site-specific, referencing an earlier function of Kristianstads konsthall, which previously served as the city’s central post office. Its plural dedications are layered and emotive; the artist triggers the audience’s tears by placing a bin of onions in the gallery.
How did you come up with the title: Dedication. Traces and Tactics? I read the title as keywords – but why were these particular words important for the context?
Keywords is an appropriate way of describing the words in the title, especially ‘traces’ and ‘tactics,’ which I think can be employed by viewers to ‘unlock’ certain aspects of the featured works.
‘Traces’ is significant both in terms of form and content. It has a strong material implication; for instance, in a charcoal or graphite drawing–which are numerous in Dedication. Traces and Tactics–you can see ‘traces’ of an artist’s gesture. There is ample room for interpretation when observing the intensity, or lack of intensity, of these gestures. As it relates to subject matter, there are often ‘traces’ of historical biases in present thinking; grappling with these ‘traces’ is a means for searching for the source—of a hero’s morale or a terrific injustice.
‘Tactics’ is tied with an overall emphasis on how the body is controlled, emancipated, and comforted, and the numerous inquiries in the show about who has the capacity to choreograph or compose that control, emancipation, and comfort. ‘Tactics’ is closely related to ‘tactical,’ hinting at the exhibition’s prioritization of touch and participation. (In a 2021 article for Kajet Journal, I introduced the notion of the ‘tactical tactile,’ as seen in the work of Dana Kavelina.) Finally, ‘tactics’ is affiliated with military conflict. Here there is a reference to the 18th century efforts of Pylyp Orlyk in the interest of Ukrainian statehood and to contemporary circumstances in the country.
The artists in Dedication. Traces and Tactics work non-hierarchically and focus on action or activities. How do you see this in relation to what’s happening in today’s Ukraine and to its history?
The non-hierarchical component reflects the fluid nature of Ukrainian art now, when there are few bounds between the position of the artist, the curator, the critic, and so forth. Hybrid practices are the norm rather than the exception. This is for better and for worse, as it is correlated with the fact that few cultural platforms are well-rooted and most are prone to rapid restructuring.
This segues into the polemics around planning in Ukraine, where galleries, museums, and other venues tend to operate annually, quarterly or month-to-month; by and large, they don't plan their programs several years out, for a host of reasons. Given this situation, sentiments of spontaneity, impulsivity, and immediacy are the norm.
In Ukraine, things (in the broadest sense of the word) have a tendency to happen fast; a kettle that has been simmering all of a sudden starts to boil. Recognizing this state of affairs, there is a pervasive need to persevere through adaptation.
Do you see the work as political and social? There are few open references to the current political state, but, for example, there are hints of it in Nikita Kadan’s reconstruction of iron spears used by Donbas miners in an early pre-revolutionary 20th century uprising and his nocturnal charcoal drawings of monuments in ruins.
The works are tuned to sociopolitical situations on both micro and macro levels. In cooperating with the artists, I grew to appreciate how their works navigate the politics of the everyday, not just the politics that make the newspaper headlines. For example, how 12345678910 Studio’s installation, “Let him sit on his own bench” (2021), depicts the disjunct between expectation and reality as it relates to donations of street furniture to residents by candidates for municipal office and the innate need to personalize public space.
Nikita Kadan’s works have a stark, even ominous air about them. Since we have realized this show in Sweden, I’ll give a nod to Ingmar Bergman and say that I liken witnessing Nikita’s works to looking “through a glass darkly.” The darkness comes as a result of fires of varying severity, whether it be the burning of coal to power an empire that has since dissolved or smelting metal to refine a crude weapon. For your readers living in the United States, I will deliver a lecture on this feature of Nikita’s work as well as its representation in the practices of his peers at Swarthmore University in suburban Philadelphia on March 31st. The title of the talk is “Burnt Matters.”
What should we take with us from the show and hope to see more of when it comes to Ukrainian artists?
My hope would be that visitors leave the show with a textured understanding of contemporary Ukrainian art, realizing the many ways that the country’s artists are searching for selfhood in dialog with their colleagues, the specificities of their home regions, and historical precedent.
More specifically, I hope viewers exit the show with a mind to keep following the careers of the participating artists, who all have a lot of momentum in their practices. I have no doubt that there will be plenty more chances to encounter their work in and beyond Ukraine.
Furthermore, Dedication. Traces and Tactics comes to a close at a moment of severe stress for Ukraine and its allies, as Russia threatens to re-assert a sphere of influence reminiscent of that which existed during the Cold War, through various disruptive/deadly means. Ukrainian independence demands steadfast dedication, as its shape and scope are being tried and tested.
Dedication. Traces and Tactics
Contemporary Art from Ukraine.
October 16 2021 – January 30 2022
Curated by: Alex Fisher and Filippa Forsberg
Kristianstads konsthall, Kristianstad, Sweden
Jointly organized by Kristianstads konsthall and Milvus Artistic Research Center
Supported by: House of Europe and Swedish Arts Council
With: 12345678910 Studio, Yaroslav Futymskyi, Nikita Kadan, Dana Kavelina, Lada Nakonechna; performances by Petro Ryaska and Blyzkist
Follow Alex Fisher om Instagram: @walexfisher