The fifth edition of the Kyiv Biennial will take place across Europe at locations in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, Berlin, Warsaw, Lublin, Antwerp and Vienna as the main exhibition venue. In view of the brutal Russian attack on Ukraine, a comprehensive biennial project in Kyiv long seemed deeply uncertain, if not impossible. But, with a cascade of openings—starting in Kyiv in October 2023, finishing in Berlin in 2024—the fifth Kyiv Biennial will be taking place.

This Biennial edition is conceived as a European event, with dispersed exhibitions and public programs in a number of Ukrainian and EU cities, and realized in partnership with leading European institutions in the field of contemporary art.

The project aims to reintegrate the Ukrainian artistic community, divided by war and scattered across Europe, and to enable its actors to work together with international colleagues and partners on the cultural, social and environmental challenges Ukraine is currently facing and to place them in a global context. Artistic images, investigative documentations and institutional practices will be explored with regard to possible exit strategies from the current impasse of war, authoritarianism and colonialism, where the scenarios for a new Ukraine beyond war could even be imagined.

The decentralized European Kyiv Biennial will be an important and at the same time “introductory gesture” that creates bridges and pillars for a long-time relationship with Ukraine on a personal as well as institutional level, which will remain beyond the projects carried out in Autumn 2023.

Thursday, November 6th 2014, 19:00
44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv

Lockout. Opening of the Exhibition of Eastern European Critical Art

Visual Culture Research Center invites you to the opening of the exhibition Lockout, which will take place on Thursday, November 6th at 19:00. Curators: Oksana Briukhovetska (Visual Culture Research Center, Ukraine) and Stanisław Ruksza (Center for Contemporary Art Kronika, Poland).

Exhibition’s title Lockout refers to the work stoppage at the enterprise initiated by the employer – practice, which is forbidden in many countries but Ukraine. Curators consider this phenomenon a metaphor of the social situation in post-socialist world. Works, presented at the exhibition, reveal the hidden, or invisible, reality of labour as one of the most routine and important aspects of human life. Exhibition Lockout includes critical art works from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary.

Exhibition participants: Anatoliy Belov (Ukraine), Oksana Briukhovetska (Ukraine), Anna Fabricius (Hungary), Rafał Jakubowicz (Poland), Taras Kamennoy (Ukraine), Lilia Li-mi-yan (Russia), Viktoria Lomasko (Russia), Yulia Mazurova (Russia), Anna Molska (Poland), Laura Pawela (Poland), Valentyna Petrova (Ukraine), Oleksiy Radynski (Ukraine), Mykola Ridnyi (Ukraine), Khaim Sokol (Russia), Iryna Stasyuk (Ukraine), Łukasz Surowiec (Poland), Piotr Wysocki (Poland).

Curators of the exhibition Oksana Briukhovetska and Stanisław Ruksza: “We can see how in Eastern Europe local phenomena correspond to the problems of the neighboring countries. Working with those, who are expelled from the world of wealth, artists make them visible. And this may become the first step towards important changes”.

Within the framework of exhibition meetings with its participants and film screenings will take place:

November 7th, 19:00 – screening of Fortress, Common Places by Mykola Ridnyi.

November 8th, 19:00 – screening of Integration, Referendum, Ukraine Goes To War by Oleksiy Radynski.

Exhibition is open from the 7th until the 30th of November, from 12:00 until 20:00, every day, except Monday.

Information about curators:

Oksana Briukhovetska – artist, curator at Visual Culture Research Center. Graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv. Curator of the exhibitions Childhood. Uncensored and Ukrainian Body at Visual Culture Research Center.

Stanisław Ruksza – curator, art historian. Director of the Center for Contemporary Art Kronika (Bytom, Poland). Author of the numerous publications about contemporary art, coordinator of Political Critique club in Śląsk.

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 for the purpose of creating the interdisciplinary platform for analysis of the Ukrainian post-Soviet condition at the intersection of art, knowledge, and politics. Since its inception VCRC has organized over 150 debates, conferences and seminars with the participation of Ukrainian and international researchers, as well as nearly 20 art exhibitions.

Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street, 1st floor, Kyiv)

Events will take place with support from: Krytyka Polityczna (Poland), ERSTE Foundation (Austria)

Exhibition Lockout is co-organized by Visual Culture Research Center and Center for Contemporary Art Kronika (Bytom, Poland) with support from Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

Information partners:

Contacts:

+38 096 492 96 00 (Nataliya Neshevets), +38 093 460 68 81 (Oksana Briukhovetska)
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua