Against all odds, the event’s fifth edition
launches across multiple venues in Ukraine and beyond

Euridice Arratia

Imagining utopias at the Kyiv Biennial

Kyiv has long possessed a bewildering splendor.
Under the bright sun of an unseasonably warm October, the city looked even more
magnificent, despite the full-scale Russian invasion of
Ukraine. In defiance of the state of emergency, the fifth edition of the Kyiv Biennial opened in the Ukrainian capital on October 5. The ambitious series of exhibitions and
events takes place until January 2024 not only in Kyiv but also in
Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod, Berlin, Warsaw, Lublin, Antwerp, and Vienna, which
hosts the main exhibition.

On the way to the opening at the Dovzhenko
Centre in Kyiv, I remembered a conversation with the co-organizer and head of
the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), Vasyl Cherepanyn, about what he sees
as a predicament for the biennial – or any cultural enterprise now taking place
in Ukraine. ‘There’s a need for Ukrainians to regain a sense of normality in
their lives,’ he explains. ‘But the cultural activities within the country
should, in fact, highlight the opposite: that we are functioning completely
outside the realm of normalcy.’ Keeping culture alive is not, he insists, about
providing a ‘comforting feeling for either the local or foreign audience. While
adapting is a natural survival behavior, we shouldn’t adapt to the atrocities.
Doing so would only normalize the ongoing warfare, which shows no signs of
ending anytime soon.’

The VCRC launched the Kyiv Biennial in 2015,
conceiving it as an interdisciplinary international forum to foster dialogue
between Ukrainian and international artists, cultural workers, and the public.
As the war continues to ravage the country, this exchange feels more urgent now
than ever. From the beginning, the Russian offensive has aimed at not only
conquering territory, but also obliterating identity. Ukrainian cultural
producers are thus challenged with the task of defending their identity while
simultaneously grappling with a controversial historiography that includes the
question of how to contend with the legacy of Soviet-era Ukraine.

Holding the biennial seemed impossible until
this spring, when the VCRC planned it in record time in alliance with Tranzit, a network
of independent art initiatives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Slovakia, and Romania; the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; the Museum Crisis
Center in Lviv; Other Edges, Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv; Asortymentna Kimnata in
Ivano-Frankivsk; and Sorry No Rooms Available in Uzhhorod. With the participation of more than 100 artists, this improbable edition
of the event is a testament to the tenacity of its organizers, curators, and
artists. It is nothing less than a project of cultural survival and
international solidarity in the face of physical and existential threat.

The cavernous Dovzhenko Centre, housed
in a Soviet-era film printing factory, is Ukraine’s largest film archive. It
hosts ‘The River Wailed Like a Wounded Beast’, an
exhibition dedicated to the Dnipro River, which connects the present to the
past. In June 2023, Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka
Dam, causing a humanitarian and ecological disaster. ‘The explosion prompted us
to rethink the relationship between humans and the Dnipro River through the
prism of cinema,’ wrote
the curators and film scholars Oleksandr Teliuk, Aliona Penzii, and Stanislav Bytiutskyi in their
official statement. The show features films by avant-garde icons
such as Dziga Vertov, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and Arnold
Kordyum, who commemorated the dam’s construction. This heroic imagery starkly
contrasts with a video installation produced from found footage, documenting
the catastrophic aftermath of the dam’s weaponization.

On October 6, the
biennial opened its second leg in Ivano-Frankivsk, 451 kilometers and a 12-hour
train ride from Kyiv. Nestled in the Carpathian region, the city has so far
been ‘at the periphery of war,’ which is also the exhibition’s title. Curated
by Alona Karavai, Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk, and Anton Usanov, the
exhibition is staged in the Asortymentna Kimnata project
space, now a vital wartime hub with an artists’ residence, a library, and an
archive. Most of the artworks displayed on the main
floor and in the rundown basement (which doubles as a bomb shelter) grapple with the ethical dilemma signaled by the curatorial
statement: ‘On the periphery of war, we either pretend to approach a zero point
of the frontline through volunteering, self-restraint, and search for an
internal enemy, or we move away from the existential experience through
pleasure and sarcasm.’ But no matter how hard artists try to look away,
stubborn reality keeps seeping in. Photography by Olesia Saienko (The Guilty
Pleasure – Banquet) and video work by Anna Potiomkina (Dancing at the
Death) tenderly confront the loss of loved ones while the artists are torn
between the celebration and the guilt of being alive. Other
artists, like Ivan Bazak, are less interested in autobiography and instead
coolly zero in on the theatrics of power. In his installation, Backstage of Historical Events, Bazak
recreates the hall of the Palace of Independence in Belarus where the Minsk
agreements, drafted in 2014 to stop the war in Donbas, were made.

A handful of the biennial’s artists have joined the military (on October 27, Galeria Labirynt in Lublin opens an exhibition by artists who have become soldiers). On view in Ivano-Frankivsk, What prevents a sermon from becoming a sermon becomes one (2023) is a poignant audio work by artist Bohdan Bunchak, who was severely wounded on the front. The collage of sounds, many of which Bunchak collected in the combat zone, is, he says, ‘an improvisation in the spirit of live radio broadcasts: there is some music, words, and stories about life; pieces of tracks, humming, and then broken words and phrases.’ The compelling monologue is, the artist says, ‘hardly a sermon, but I hope it becomes one.’
Sorry No Rooms Available, an international artist residency operating since 2016, hosts the biennial leg in Uzhhorod, a western Ukrainian city on the Slovakian border. Curated by Daria Shevtsova and Petro Ryaska, and on view in the Intourist-Zakarpattia Hotel, a crumbling Soviet-era Modernist building, the show takes up the idea of the hotel as a transient realm where expectation and uncertainty merge into a suspended state. Viewers navigate leaky staircases, solitary suites (one illuminated by Danylo Halkin’s The Nightlight, a 1980s red lamp from his hometown Dnipro, which he’s kept with him since being displaced), dimmed corridors (one lined by Olena Pronkina’s series of delicate, melancholic paintings depicting the experience of losing a home), and hidden, magical spots such as the ‘Japanese salon’ houses of Marharyta Zhurunova and Bohdan Lokatyr’s installation Remains.

The organizers bill this Kyiv Biennial as a multinational solidarity-oriented event, and several of the international artists have longstanding relationships with Ukraine. ‘It was important to be physically present,’ says German artist<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/39328/Henrike-Naumann" target="_blank"> Henrike Naumann</a>, who staged Breathe (2023), an electrifying performance in collaboration with the drummer Stanislav Ivashchenko at the imposing Brutalist Ivano-Frankivsk Drama Theater. In it, two actors, resembling the Hutsul warrior figures depicted in the theater’s lavish wall carvings, come to life in a ritual that fluctuates between militarist and homoerotic. ‘In Berlin I’m working with female artists and curators from Ukraine who were fleeing the war,’ says Naumann. ‘But here I decided to work only with men who cannot leave the country.’ 
 
‘We should come back to the idea of solidarity, and it’s initiated in your own body,’ say artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/22860/Pawe%C5%82-Althamer" target="_blank">Pawel Althamer</a>, speaking from Warsaw. Althamer’s contribution is the Golden Island, a former bear enclosure at the Warsaw Zoo that the artist has transformed into a meeting place. ‘The idea was to invite people to experience the individual, freedom, creativity, in a very peaceful, simple way […] you can sit down and make a bonfire and read your favorite books, but connect with yourself first,’ says Althamer. The meetings, some including Ukrainian artists living in Warsaw, are broadcast live on the biennial’s Facebook page.

The openings in western Ukraine were intimate
gatherings and at times had a DIY quality, but the biennial’s main exhibition
in an airy building in Vienna’s Augarten park is more expansive. Curated by
Serge Klymko, Hedwig Saxenhuber, and Georg Schöllhammer, it includes works by
around 60 Ukrainian and international artists. German artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6932/Wolfgang-Tillmans" target="_blank">Wolfgang Tillmans</a>
shows Weak Signal IV (2014), an inkjet print of a television attempting
to produce an image from a weak signal, but also invited photojournalist
Friedrich Bungert to exhibit his photographs of people injured in the war. Last
winter, Tillmans handed over his Berlin-based nonprofit exhibition space
Between Bridges to Ukrainian artists and collectives for 3 months, and in 2024
the space will host Kyiv Biennial events. ‘Being able to live and move freely
…was based on democracy and flourishing in a free Western European world,’ says
Tillmans. ‘I realized that there are the enemies of democracy, free speech,
women’s rights, and LBGTQ+ rights. They put their energy into fighting our
freedom every day while we are living our lives, and not often feeling that
urgency. I feel the urgency of that threat and want to spend time, energy, and
resources on defending these rights.’
On view not far from Tillmans’s work, Dana
Kavelina’s astounding sci-fi film It Can't Be That
Nothing That Can Be Returned (2022) imagines what Ukraine might look like
after the war. Future citizens try to understand why the violence took place
and create a comprehensive computer model of history. To restore the lost
equality of both past and future, they decide to resurrect everyone who died in
the Russian attacks. ‘The opportunity to imagine utopias,’ says the artist, ‘is
very important in the darkest of times.’

<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/22860/Pawe%C5%82-Althamer" target="_blank">Pawel Althamer</a> is represented by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1114/Foksal-Gallery-Foundation" target="_blank">Foksal Gallery Foundation</a> (Warsaw) and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1234/neugerriemschneider" target="_blank">neugerriemschneider</a> (Berlin); Ivan Bazak by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1173/Kewenig" target="_blank">Kewenig</a> (Berlin); Dana Kavelina by<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2255/Fridman-Gallery" target="_blank"> Fridman Gallery</a> (New York); and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6932/Wolfgang-Tillmans" target="_blank">Wolfgang Tillmans</a> by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1076/Galerie-Buchholz" target="_blank">Galerie Buchholz</a> (Berlin), <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1098/Galerie-Chantal-Crousel" target="_blank">Chantal Crousel</a> (Paris), <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1256/Regen-Projects" target="_blank">Regen Projects</a> (Los Angeles) and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1103/David-Zwirner" target="_blank">David Zwirner</a> (New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Hong Kong).
Euridice Arratia is a writer and curator. 
Published on October 27, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed image:&nbsp;Opening of Kyiv Biennial at Dovzhenko Centre, Kyiv. Courtesy of the VCRC.

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