International Contemporary Art Exhibition Takes Place in Ukraine
Exhibition of Nordic, Baltic and Ukrainian Contemporary Art
September 19th, 2016An exhibition entitled ‘Identity. Behind the Curtain of Uncertainty’ took place at the National Art Museum of Ukraine in March this year. It was organized by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in partnership with the National Art Museum of Ukraine, as well as the Nordic and Baltic States in Ukraine. It aimed to help the political situation in the Ukraine.
The exhibition was a major display of the North Eastern countries’ contemporary art and showcased more than 30 artists from 9 countries. Visitors were able to take part in different events as part of the exhibition, including discussions, creative workshops and educational programs.
This exhibition was unique in the sense that, apart from showing the work of great artists, its organization was supported by eight embassies: those of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden.
These embassies came together to help the complicated political situation in Ukraine through art. The idea behind this was to create a united European identity which would open a mutual dialogue.
Solvita Krese, Director of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and the curator of this exhibition, decided to concentrate on the elements making up political, social, and national identity. In the pursuit of helping Ukraine find its identity, artists for example re-addressed art that was forbidden during Communism.
Solvita Krese commented on the artwork: “with this exhibition we wish to re-evaluate the notion of identity, emphasizing its diverse aspects and to welcome the exploration of national, political, territorial, social and gender issues through the prism of identity, having previously assumed that artists are sharp-sighted interpreters of context and commentators of situation, able to discover and sketch out the network of changes in today’s maps of the world faster than anyone else, and are not afraid to take a look behind the curtain of uncertainty, in which traumas of the past and vagueness of the future are woven together”.