Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Kyiv

The children were playing hide-and-seek when they found a cave. And there, among thousand-year-old boulders, they came across some shells that had long since turned to stone. “How old do you think they are? Are they older than Mom? Are they alive? Are we?” The project began with the artist musing on what sort of feelings a paleontological discovery might evoke. There is something special about the moment of discovery itself, an unintentional encounter, and a fascination with something ancient being hidden beneath the earth. The exhibition transports inside a mystification, a fairytale world where such an encounter can occur anywhere: amid an untamed landscape, above or below ground, in outlying Troyeshchyna or in historical Kudryavka. Many of the most important discoveries in the history of paleosciences, such as the Lascaux Cave in France, were made by non-specialists, oftentimes by children. In Karina’s works, the child’s gaze, curious and thirsty for knowledge, turns any place into a space for play, exploration, and discovery. The children’s figures also allude to the story of Mary Anning, an outstanding self-taught paleontologist who began collecting fossils as a child. In her work, Karina Synytsia often draws on Ukrainian monumental art to highlight its significance. In Discovery!, however, monumental sculptures — in particular Ernest Kotkov’s Vodohrai fountain in Troyeshchyna — serve as a backdrop: to the artist their rounded forms and winding contours resemble landscapes from the distant past, where life teemed among seas and cliffs, long before mass

As part of the Month of Lithuanian Photography in Kyiv, the Laboratory of Contemporary Art Mala Gallery will present the Lost Time exhibition, curated by Darius Vaichekauskas. With the development of technology, means of reflection and transmission of reality, photography moves away from a purely technical function and into a sphere of post-photography. Consequently, photography becomes a source of philosophical meanings and interpretations. Post-photography is characterized by constant manipulation of the image (editing, drawing, deconstruction). It forces us to reconsider the phenomenon of "photography", which has virtually ceased to exist as a "real-time referent". The group exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian photography shows several approaches and interpretations of the post-photography subject. Aurelia Maknite, Darius Vaichekauskas, Vytautas Kumža, Valentin Odnovjun, Deauville Dagene, and Juozapas Kalnius explore completely different photographic strategies. Vytautas Kumža focuses on the first stage of photo development, which he finds much more interesting than rendering or post-processing images. Valentin Odnovjun, in his Process series, shows photographs of discarded photo paper pieces found in the photo laboratory at the Patarei prison in Tallinn, Estonia. Deauville Dagene presents photographs that give the impression of a witness of place and time. However, they are filled with memory.

The exhibition Kherson. The Steppe Holds is the space of resilience, love, loss, cherishing a memory, and the project about the Ukrainian South. It is based on the films Ukrainian Sheriffs, The Editorial Office, and Volcano. This is a tribute to the Kherson region — the homeland of the exhibition’s authors, Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko. At the heart of the exhibition are unique archives, video, and photographic materials filmed in the Kherson region by the filmmakers and their crews before the full-scale invasion, some of which are being shown publicly for the first time. These materials have taken on new significance in the wake of the region’s and the country’s profound losses and ongoing challenges. The three films form the thematic cores of the exhibition, presented in the space of the Old Arsenal: Ukrainian Sheriffs explores the role of local communities and self-governance; The Editorial Office delves into the tension between truth and post-truth in the political landscape of contemporary Ukraine; Volcano is a reflection on returning to oneself and the world amid the dystopian reality of the Ukrainian South. Today, each of Roman and Darya’s films and all the archival materials for them is a space of memory about something that no longer exists or almost does not exist; something that may not return or may return in a completely different form. The exhibition unfolds across five halls of the Arsenal and also includes a room dedicated to the archival materials of Kherson photojournalist Andriy Matrosov, as well as documentation from the “Ukrainian War Archive”, which records Russian war crimes. The final space of the exhibition invites personal reflection on what has been seen and felt. "For us, these are the memories of our youth, a testimony to what this land once was, to what we lost because of the Russian invasion, and what we continue to lose. These are places where our relatives and friends chose to stay, despite the war. Places where children’s umbilical cords are buried. The things that matter most, the ones we long to rebuild. And the places we return to every night in our dreams. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to transform our archives into a cohesive artistic work together with the Mystetskyi Arsenal team", Darya Averchenko, on her and Roman Bondarchuk’s decision to create the exhibition. "At this moment in time, it is especially important for Mystetskyi Arsenal to continue engaging with the concepts that matter most to our society. And one of them is the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We invite visitors to reconsider the Kherson region as a space of deep personal and collective meaning. We believe that this documentary and mystical journey carries a special significance today", says Anna Pohribna, Deputy Director for Programming at Mystetskyi Arsenal. Visitors to the exhibition will experience an immersive encounter with the Kherson region seen through the lens of a camera and through the personal memories of its inhabitants, and also key figures in contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The exhibition space will bring together site-specific installations designed by exhibition architect Oleksandr Burlaka, along with video and photo projects, artistic films by the curatorial team, and more than thirty multimedia works inspired by the featured films. "This exhibition is an attempt to view the South not as a marginalized region, but as a vital point for understanding contemporary Ukraine. This research is like the steppe itself: quiet, vast, windy, and yet full of voices. We must rethink the South not only as a geography of losses, but as a space of strength, imagination, community, and renewal. For me, as someone born in the South, this project is deeply personal. It is a work of grief. And a work of hope", says Yana Barinova, Director Ukraine Programme at ERSTE Foundation. According to the curator Kateryna Botanova, the exhibition is an invitation to stay with the Kherson region, which is no longer there and will definitely be there, to think about how natural and cultural landscapes shape our society, how we can remember our losses, and where we can get strength for the future. This time, Mystetskyi Arsenal will present not a historical exhibition, but the history of Kherson region of independent Ukraine.