Despite Russia's continued assault on Ukraine, the Kiev Biennale will return for its 5th edition this autumn with a series of exhibitions spread across six venues internationally. The program will begin in Kiev, Ukraine, and move to Vienna in October. Further events are planned for Warsaw, Poland, and two other Ukrainian cities, Uzhhorod and Ivano-Frankivsk, followed by various programs in Berlin in 2024.
It wasn't clear until recently whether this year's edition would be possible. “It is one of the roles of the cultural realm to counter the logic of war, which also attacks everything civilian by destroying cultural infrastructure,” Vasyl Cherepanyn, co-organizer of the biennial, told Artnet News. “This is a deliberate attack on our cultural identity. It is very important to combat these genocidal intentions.”
The Kiev Biennale was founded in 2015, partly in response to the Maidan Revolution of 2014, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, and Russia's subsequent invasion of Crimea in the same year. In subsequent years, the biennial has promoted art as a crucial but underutilized means of activism, resistance and political engagement, marking the centenary of the October Revolution in 2017, revisiting the Chernobyl disaster and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2019, and, in 2021, highlighting anti-fascist alliances across Europe, as well as decolonization processes in Eastern Europe.
This year's edition will address the immediate aftershocks of war and displacement, as well as Russia's historic and ongoing cultural assault on Ukraine's land, people and way of life. Due to its international expansion and scope, the biennale was reformulated as an “evergreen” European project that highlights the importance of international solidarity and unifies Ukraine's artistic community, which is currently spread across Europe.
In Kiev, the Dovzhenko Center will use its extensive film archive to present a visual project about the Dnipro River in Ukraine, tracing its historical role in the division of Ukraine's territory, its symbolic resonances in art and literature, and its recent weaponry through the devastating breach of the Kakhovka dam by Russian forces in June.
Two more exhibitions will take place at the Asortymentna Kimnata art gallery in Ivano-Frankivsk and at the Sorry, No Rooms Available venue in Uzhhorod, both cities in western Ukraine that are relatively far from the front lines. The venues emerged in their current form as a result of the war, providing emergency residences for artists evacuated from heavily bombed areas. Artwork produced over the last 15 months will be on display with the hope of supporting these new initiatives and making them sustainable models in the long term.
“The artists [exhibiting at the biennale] weren't just looking for refuge, but also living and working conditions during their stay in Ukraine,” explains Cherepanyn. “This is a really unique social phenomenon because these places are a melting pot for artists and curators from different regions and have become very productive places for collaboration.”
While it seemed important for the biennial to take place within Ukraine “against all odds”, the situation remains unpredictable enough that the main part of the exhibition will be presented by tranzit.at at Vienna's Augarten Contemporary. A longtime partner of the biennale, this fringe cultural center helped create Office Ukraine Vienna, an initiative supporting Ukrainian artists and curators who fled the war. The exhibition will host around 30 or 40 artists from Ukraine and other countries.
“It's not just Ukrainian or Eastern European artists who have a lot to say about the war. It's important for Western artists to respond,” said Cherepanyn. “This is not just a local conflict between a few Slavic nations. One of the purposes of this exhibition is to understand that this is a great European war. How did a new fascist war in Europe become possible? The whole continent has to rethink itself deeply so that 'never again' becomes possible again.”
Source: Artnet News