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The Cultural Forum “Transcending Borders: GaliciaKult”
Visual program

Kharkiv | 01.10.2016-31.10.2016

From Trush and Selsky to the latest icon painting and photography and performance: in the visual program "GaliciaCult" our curators tried to present the visual art of Galicia of the XX-XXI centuries in all its diversity of trends and varieties.

Migration, polyethnicity, involvement in the ideological and geographical planes of empires, militarism, such specific features of Galicia as Hermeticism ("a kindred spirit"), missionary ("Ukrainian Piedmont"), Europeanism and others – these are the main topics of the Galician border in the structure of the curatorial narrative. A separate story was built around the figures of prominent artists, whose fate is indicative of the situation in Western Ukraine in the second half of the twentieth century: Leopold Levytsky (Lviv) and Opanas Zalyvakha (Ivano-Frankivsk).

It is important that the curators not only "represented the art of Galicia", but also demonstrated certain parallels with Kharkiv artistic experience. Despite different historical circumstances, both Kharkiv and Lviv were prominent centres of modernism and underground and have broad analogies in the socio-cultural context: the traumatic experience of Sovietization, almost radical changes in ethnic and social composition, the formation of Ukrainian identity in empires.

The events of the program took place at almost dozen locations. The main project was located on two sites – at Yermilov Centre and Kharkiv Art Museum. Many archival materials – documents, photos, videos – were included into the exposition series in order to build a full-fledged story about how old and new myths of Galicia were formed.

At GaliciaCult we continued the tradition of curatorial trips initiated earlier at the DonCult forum. We also continued the tradition of accompanying the exhibition program with dialogue formats: discussions, disputes, presentations with questions and answers (for more details see the program of the forum).

As part of the visual program, we also presented projects created in the summer during Art Residences joined by Kharkiv and Galician artists, researchers and researchers: "Diary" – an exhibition based on the results of the residency at Pavlo Makov’s; "Pro_Slovo": urban project of revitalization of the space around the house "Slovo" (this project remained a vision, but the residency encouraged the creation of website about this legendary commune house for writers: http://proslovo.com/; it was created by Anastasia Kovaleva from Kharkiv in partnership with the Kharkiv LitMuseum). In addition, the exhibition that resulted from the art residency "Communication Circle" in Yermilov Centre was a kind of art prelude to the forum and took place in September.

Finally, a separate important part of the program was Performance School – a festival of "Days of Performance Art in Lviv": performances, workshops and lectures by Ukrainian, Polish and Israeli performers.

 

Curators

  • Oksana Barshynova (Kyiv)

    Oksana Barshynova (Kyiv)

    Art critic, curator, Deputy Director for Exposition and Exhibition of the National Art Museum of Ukraine. She studies and promotes Ukrainian art of the last quarter of the XX – beginning of the XXI centuries. Author of articles on the history of art of the twentieth century and contemporary art.

  • Dmytro Golets (Kyiv)

    Dmytro Golets (Kyiv)

    Art critic, expert of the Korners Auction House. Curator of the exhibition "Mykhailo Tkachenko. 150 years since his birth" and the author and compiler of the monograph "Mykhailo Stepanovych Tkachenko 1860 - 1916" (Kyiv, 2010). Co-curator of two exhibitions "Russian and Ukrainian art from private collections" (Kyiv Art Gallery National Museum, 2003, 2004) and the exhibition "Serhiy Shyshko" (Spiritual Treasures of Ukraine Museum, Kyiv, 2006)

  • Natalia Kosmolinska (Lviv)

    Natalia Kosmolinska (Lviv)

    Art critic, deputy director of the Lviv Palace of Arts. Art critic, editor of art programs of Lviv Radio, art page of the Zbruc Internet portal, editor-in-chief of "AZ-art" and "Real Home" magazines. Co-author of the book about the Borys Voznytsky Lviv National Art Gallery "Game to the Museum” (together with Iryna Magdysh). In 2019, Natalka passed away. But we will always follow what she taught us, try to work with art carefully, deeply and critically.

Video of the project(9)