ARTSLINK ASSEMBLY 2022

November 30 – December 2, 2022
Online and In-Person in Warszawa, Poland

ArtsLink Assembly 2022 is a platform for Ukrainian artists, curators, and cultural leaders to share perspectives and ideas for the future of the cultural life of the country

As part of the CEC ArtsLink re-focusing of its programming to address the needs caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, ArtsLink Assembly 2022 is produced by CEC ArtsLink and the Ukrainian Institute, Kyiv, Ukraine, in partnership with Open Place, Kyiv, Ukraine. It took place in Warszawa, Poland.

ArtsLink Assembly 2022: Greener Grass? Cultivating Transborder Connections Between Ukrainian Cultural Communities is curated by a specially convened group of independent artists and curators from across Ukraine:

Lia Dostlieva, Donetsk, Ukraine, currently in Poznan, Poland
Andrii Dostliev, Donetsk, Ukraine, currently in Poznan, Poland
Anna Gaidai, Lviv, Ukraine, currently in Vienna, Austria
Yulia Kostereva and Yuriy Kruchak (Open Place, Kyiv, Ukraine; Yulia currently in Warszawa, Poland, Yuriy in Kyiv)
Anastasiia Manuliak and Mariia Volchonok (Ukrainian Institute, Kyiv, Ukraine)

Curatorial statement in Ukrainian and English

With commissioned work, dialogues, presentations and panel discussions, the ArtsLink Assembly brings together over 40 key Ukrainian artists and cultural leaders to reflect on what needs to happen now, and what strategic decisions are needed for the future.

CEC ArtsLink firmly believes in the power of artists and the potency of creative social engagement to help build dialogue between individuals and communities. In order to rebuild Ukraine, there must be a robust and shared vision for the support of artists and their vital role in the reconstruction of Ukrainian civil society.

ArtsLink Assembly, a transnational meeting of artists, organizations, and activists, advocates for the vital importance of transnational cultural mobility. 

All presentations in Ukrainian, unless otherwise noted, with simultaneous interpretation in English

Day 1: OUTLINING THE ISSUES

Introductions
Everything Everywhere All at Once: Facing the Reality of Rebuilding Culture in Post-War Ukraine
Keynote by Kateryna Botanova (in English)

Kateryna Botanova is a Basel-based cultural critic and curator from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a co-curator of the multidisciplinary cultural festival Culturescapes (Basel, Switzerland).

Needs of Ukrainian culture during the war and recommendations for the next steps

Kateryna Kravchuk presents the key findings and stats on the situation within Ukrainian culture and creative industries after February 24th. Introduction to the recommendations developed by Ukrainian cultural actors based on the Cultural Relations Platforms’ report (PDF) .

Independents Panel Discussion

 Representative of independent sector addressing the challenges of building and supporting professional careers in the independent cultural field, and the creation of platforms for transborder collaborations

Moderated by Anastasiia Platonova, independent cultural journalist

(Simultaneous English translation in this video starts around 1 min 30 sec into the panel. Apologies for the inconvenience.)

 

Art Residencies’ Adaptation to New Challenges During the War
NGOs Panel Discussion

Panel discussion with the representatives of non-governmental institutions focusing on sustaining and encouraging team collaborations, including remote working and sustaining long term programming


Moderated by
Lesia Kulchinska, curator and visual studies researcher affiliated with the Research Platform of the Pinchuk Art Center

Private Institutions Panel Discussion

Representatives of private institutions focusing on strengthening and resourcing the emerging new arts community and new ways of working; building and sustaining connections and collaborations with displaced or relocated Ukrainian cultural practitioners

  • Bozhena Pelenska, Jam Factory Art Center (Lviv) (online)
  • Mykhailo Glubokyi, IZOLYATSIA Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Donetsk / Kyiv / Soledar)
  • Ksenia Malykh, Pinchuk Art Centre (Kyiv) (online)
  • Oleksanda Osadcha, Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography (Kharkiv)


Moderated by
Iryna Starovoyt, poet, essayist, and Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University

Day 2: Finding Solutions

Activities of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the state of culture and creative industries during the war

Presentation of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation activities and projects during the war. “The state of culture and creative industries during the war” (in Ukrainian and English) – results of the research conducted by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine. Presented by

  • Iryna Osadcha, Deputy Director of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation for Organizational Development
  • Nataliia Kernytska, International Cooperation Manager, Expert of Zapravka Initiative

Video in Ukrainian >>  (includes introductions by Mariia Volchonok and Simon Dove)

Museums and State Institutions Panel Discussion

Representatives of museums and state institutions focusing on building connections and fostering new models of cooperation between museums and cultural organizations; new collaborative models for independent practitioners, NGOs and state institutions

  • Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, Director General, Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex (Kyiv) 
  • Kyrylo Lipatov, Odesa National Art Museum (Odesa) (couldn’t join online as planned due to lack of electricity and connection)
  • Olha Novikova, The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts (Kyiv)


Moderated by
Anastasiia Platonova, independent cultural journalist

International Experience, Part 1
  • Dejan Vasic, The Center for Cultural Decontamination (Belgrade, Serbia)
  • Tamar Janashia (Georgia) (online)
  • Nien-Ting Chen (Taiwan) 


Q&A moderated by Anastasiia Manuliak, Ukrainian Institute

International Experience, Part 2
  • Karen Jagodin, Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom (Tallinn, Estonia) (online)
  • Ieva Astahovska, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga, Latvia) (online)
  • “Re-bridging of cultural networks in Międzymorze”  presented by Gintautas Mažeikisphilosopher, cultural theorist, anthropologist, professor at the Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania)

 

Q&A moderated by Anastasiia Manuliak, Ukrainian Institute

Day 3: Results

Presentations
  • Iryna Chuzhynova, Director of Directorate of Culture and Arts, Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine (Kyiv)
  • Surviving by developing: Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund. 9 months and 9 days of action, presentation by Ilya Zabolotnyi, Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund/MOCA NGO (Kyiv)
The NGO Community Panel Discussion

Representatives of the NGO community focusing on working with communities in times of crisis and uncertainty: building and strengthening connections with relocated arts community members; mechanisms for interregional cooperation and equal opportunities across the regions of Ukraine


Moderated by Lesia Kulchinska, curator and visual studies researcher affiliated with the Research Platform of the Pinchuk Art Center

ArtsLink Assembly 2022 – Reflections

Participants (Full list of curators and speakers is in the program, adding bios is in progress)

Ukraine
Kherson

Olena Afanasieva is culture manager and civic society leader working towards culture development of Ukrainian society. Her practice focuses on the strengthening of capacities and empowerment of local creative community and on building cross-border culture dialog and cooperation. She is also is the leader of the NGO “Centre of Cultural Development “Totem”, co-founder of the art space “Urban CAD” (Creativity. Art. Development) created in Kherson in 2016 at the former industrial space using practices of art-revitalisation.

Olena is curator and art-manager of art projects in Ukraine and abroad and a manager of “Three points” art-residency in the Kherson region. As culture manager, she organized large-scale festivals in Kherson and curated exhibitions on local, national and international levels. She focused on Ukrainian identity and revision of culture & historical narratives.

On February 24, 2022 Olena was forced to leave her hometown of Kherson due to its occupation by the Russian army.

Ukraine
Kyiv

Kateryna Alymova is a cultural and educational manager. Throughout her career, she has held various positions that have contributed to her professional growth, such as organising and overseeing international music projects in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, and Portugal, working with EU programmes in the field of culture, and managing non-governmental organizations. Kateryna is a co-founder of the culture and educational platform Kyiv Contemporary Music Days and artistic director of the international music festival “Jauna Muzika”.

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Latvia
Valmiera

Ieva Astahovska is an art scholar, critic and curator. She works at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, where she leads research projects related to art and culture in (post)socialist period, and entanglements between postsocialist and postcolonial perspective in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.Her recently curated and co-curated exhibitions include Decolonial Ecologies. Understanding Postcololonial after Socialism at Riga Art Space (2022–23), Difficult Pasts: Connected Worlds at the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (2022) and the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga (2020), Ecosystems of Change in the public space of Riga (2021).

Ieva has also edited a number of research-based publications including Valdis Āboliņš: The avant-garde, mailart, the New Left and cultural relations during the Cold War (LCCA, 2019), and Revisiting Footnotes: Footprints of the Recent Past in the Post-Socialist Region (LCCA, 2015). Her research interests also include subjects such as contemporarity and historicity, relations between history and memory, peripheries, art and ecology.

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Ukraine
Mariupol

Born in Donetsk, Ukraine, Diana Berg was relocated to liberated Mariupol from her hometown in 2014 due to the war in Eastern Ukraine. In Mariupol she founded the art platform “Tu,” which promotes human rights and freedom through arts and culture. She is a curator and art-manager of numerous Ukrainian art projects.  As an artist, Diana uses public actionism, street theatre, installations and performance to address topics of critical thinking and human freedom, such as inequality, the border between public and private, memory and remembrance, countering stereotypes, and indifference.

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Switzerland
Basel

Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel, Switzerland. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, a Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival, among them Culturescapes 2021 Amazonia: Anthology as Cosmology; On the Edge: Culturescapes 2019 Poland; Culturescapes 2023: Sahara (upcoming). 

Kateryna was also a director of CSM/Foundation Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, where, in 2010, she launched and edited Korydor, the online journal on contemporary culture. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. 

A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on arts and culture.  Recently, Kateryna’s essays and articles appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Eurozine, Osteuropa, Various Artists, Dwutygodnik, Tagesspiegel, Atlantic Council, and more. Her essays have been included in Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art. Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021. Ibidem, 2021; Future We Are Longing For. Tempora, 2020; Bridges Not Walls: What Unites Ukrainians. VSL, 2020. More to read here linktr.ee/kbotanova

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Photo by Bettina Matthiessen for Culturescapes

Taiwan
Taipei

Nien-Ting Chen is an independent curator and visual artist. She works across cities in Asia and Europe, with her research, artistic practice focusing on developing strategies to bring young artists onto the world stage through the exchange and combination of resources. Nien-Ting is focusing on several interconnected art and curatorial projects in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Ukraine, promoting the Taiwanese arts and cultural scene within the global landscape of contemporary art.

Nien-Ting holds a Master of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art (GSA,GU), UK and currently pursuing her PhD in Art at the Liverpool School of Art and Design (LSA, LJMU). Her doctoral research delves into the objective analysis and evaluation of how the Chinese ethnic (overseas Chinese) has impacted the advancement of global contemporary art, particularly in the broader Asia, since the 1990s. By reviewing the retrospective frameworks of Asian contemporary art’s development, she aims to outline the evolution of the contemporary art movement in the last three decades, while drawing links between the cultural, historical, political and geographical development of various regions in Asia.

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UK
Oxford

Olena Chervonik is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Oxford, writing her dissertation on the early history of photography. Currently Olena cooperates with the Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP) as an academic editor and translator of the series on the history and theory of photography.

Previously, Olena received her master’s degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York and an ABD in Slavic languages and literatures and art history from the University of Kansas. She also worked as a curator of contemporary art in a number of institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA), Izolyatsia, the Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Donets, Ukraine), Videonale, the Festival of Video Art in Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), and the Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas (USA).

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Iryna Chuzhynova is the Director of the Directorate of Arts & Culture in the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine. She is also a member and co-founder of NGO’s “Coalition of Cultural Actors” and the author more than 300 publications in newspapers & magazines about both the Ukrainian and European theatre process.

Iryna holds a Ph.D. in Theater Art. From 2019 till 2021, she served as a head of the analytical department of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, a state-owned institution with the aim to facilitate development of culture and arts in Ukraine. In 2016-2019, she acted as a curator from the Ukrainian side of an all-Ukrainian competition Taking the Stage (a theatre program of the British Council in Ukraine). Prior to this, from 2012 to 2015, Iryna was a co-founder and curator of the Les Kurbas Ukrainian Emerging Directors Festival in Kyiv.

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Ukraine
Donetsk

Andrii Dostliev is an artist, curator, and photography researcher from Ukraine, currently based in Poland. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma, identity — both personal and collective, and limits of photography as a medium. Andrii’s art practice works across photography, video, drawing, performance, and installation. He has published several photobooks. Andrii’s work is held in a number of private collections nationally and internationally. He has degrees in IT and graphic design.

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Photo by Lia Dostlieva

Ukraine / Poland

Lia Dostlieva is an artist, cultural anthropologist, and essayist who works across a range of media, including photography, installation, and textile sculptures. Lia’s artistic and research practice engages with the issues of collective trauma, Anthropocene, decoloniality, and the agency of vulnerable groups. She has exhibited work at the Ludwig Museum (Budapest, Hungary), National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, Lithuania), Tbilisi Photography and Multimedia Museum (Tbilisi, Sakartvelo), National Museum of Fine Arts (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan), Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia). Her curatorial projects include the 10th Triennale of Young Polish Art (Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, Poland, 2023) and ‘Reconstruction of Memory’ (DOX, Prague, Czech Republic, 2017; IZOLYATSIA, Kyiv, Ukraine 2016). In 2022-23, she was a participant of the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, Netherlands) and a 2019 Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna, Austria). Lia also writes for publications, including e-flux Journal, Eurozine magazine, Kajet Journal, and Blok Magazine. Originally from Donetsk, Ukraine, Lia is currently in Poznan, Poland.

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Ukraine
Lviv

Anna Gaidai is a curator and manager of cultural and educational projects in Ukraine and internationally. The focus of her practice is collaborative projects in visual art and multidisciplinary projects, residencies, and cultural diplomacy. For last three years, Anna has been working as a curator and contemporary visual arts project manager at Jam Factory Art Center (JFAC) in Lviv, Ukraine. One of the projects she is curating at JFAC is the community-oriented art residencies within MagiC Carpets International Platform (Creative Europe).

Anna is also a co-author of Policy Brief “Visual Culture and Photography: Developing a Balanced Ecosystem in Ukraine”, an assessor of the international portfolio reviews at European photo festivals, and a member of the jury of art contest. Anna is also the co-founder of the NGO PhotoCULT Cultural Center and co-organizer of numerous exhibitions and international festivals of photography and visual culture (Kyiv, Chernihiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Munich) as well as international portfolio reviews in Ukraine (2011-2022). One of the projects that she has recently curated is the “Open Letter. Naked Emotions” project, which is a photography/ mail art exhibition. Anna was also a participant of Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Kassel, Germany (2022).

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Mykhailo Glubokyi is the development director of “IZOLYATSIA“, a platform for cultural initiatives that was established in 2010, and which was originally located in a former insulation materials factory in Donetsk, Ukraine. The organization aims to effect systemic change in Ukrainian society and implements projects on the local and European levels.

During the last decade, IZOLYATSIA became a symbol of the resilience of the Ukrainian cultural sector and continues to champion democratic values based on the belief that cultural institutions are pillars of a free democratic society. Mykhailo has been a part of the foundation since 2011, implementing site-specific, participatory community-oriented cultural projects and turning various industrial places into vibrant cultural spaces. Since 2021, he has also been a board member of one of the oldest European networks of cultural centres, Trans Europe Halles, and a member of the consortium implementing the Creative Europe mobility scheme for artists and cultural professionals, “i-Portunus”. Ever since 2019, Mykhailo has focused on collaboration with local communities, capacity building for rural areas, support for cultural decentralization and international collaborations, programs, and exchanges, especially in East of Ukraine and Eastern and Central European regions. Also, beginning in 2014, he had been involved in developing the IZONE creative hub as well as residencies and educational programs for creative entrepreneurs, artists, and cultural professionals.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Olena Honcharuk is the acting general director of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, the Ukrainian state film archive. The organization is a center for film conservation, a research and presenting institution, a film museum, mediatheque, and art cluster all under the same roof.

Olena began at Dovzhenko Centre as exhibition manager, then later joined the creation of the Film Museum and lately became its leader. Her museum career began in 2013 in museum communications at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Olena firmly believes that the voice of cultural and liberal institutions should be more audible, more powerful to shape and support values, thus contributing to society’s development.

Ukraine
Muzychi

Embracing ideas of consumption, gender, love, power, protest culture, experience of war, plants and dogs, Alevtina Kakhidze is co-founder of a residency program for international artists in the village of Muzychi, The Muzychi Expanded History Project.

To raise awareness of climate change and more sustainable living in the era of global shifts in society, especially in post-pandemic times, she has initiated the laboratory Adult Garden to observe coexistence and the dynamics of plants freed from the gardener’s intervention.

During her ArtsLink International Fellowship 2020 (virtual and in-person residencies), Alevtina and her US collaborators embarked on a garden-focused project that centers on critical observation of organized experimental gardens and natural conservation areas. The artists and scientists from University of Kansas studied the competition and collaboration observable among plants and between plants and living organisms such as insects and birds.  Studies focused on the interaction between native and non-native (including invasive) plants, and explored the cases when a plant native to the US became invasive in Ukraine and vice versa. Alevtina also studied traditional Native American practices of gardening and medicinal plant use.

In Alevtina’s third year of ArtsLink International Fellowship in 2022, she is planning a collaboration with the Kansas University School of Visual Art on the project ‘Fate of Plants’. She will continue to research stable systems – prairies in Kansas, a steppe in Ukraine and the restored plant systems on the edge of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – to generate new work, a series of texts for art and scientific publications and an online discussion. The project has been postponed until the end of war in Ukraine.

The artist profile in the Burlington Contemporary magazine, July 27, 2022
“With the Russian invasion in February 2022, Kakhidze’s art became more radical. Her critique of the war continues to be enacted through a personal lens, however her anti-colonialist narratives are more explicit and her reference points are wider, articulating the violence and imminent danger that characterize life for so many in Ukraine.” (Svitlana Biedarieva, Burlington Contemporary, July 27, 2022)

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Ukraine
Ivano-Frankivsk

Alona Karavai is a co-founder of numerous art organizations, including Insha Osvita, residency house Khata-Maysternya, agency proto produkciia, the gallery Asortymentna kimnata, and of the art media outlet covering art post impreza. She is also a social investor at Urban Space 500, and a co-organizer of the Porto Franko festival.

Alona studied organizational development in TU Kaiserslautern. Her professional interests are cultural management and curating, visual art and music, organizational development and various educational products.

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Photo by Valentyn Kuzan

Ukraine
Kyiv

Nataliia Kernytska is the International Cooperation Manager of the “Zapravka” Initiative at the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (UCF), which she joined in 2019. For two years she led the program “Culture. Tourism. Regions”.

Nataliia is currently engaged in establishing partnerships with local and international organizations, as well as developing a number of projects, such as The Chronicles of the Cultural Front, “Help to save Ukrainian culture now!”, the UCF Award, and others.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Born in Kyiv, Tatiana Kochubinska is an independent curator, writer, and lecturer, whose work focuses on Ukrainian contemporary art. She has worked as a curator on the Research Platform of the PinchukArtCentre and on the center’s exhibition and publication programs.  As a curator, Tatiana is particularly interested in questions of responsibility, Soviet history and its relationship to today’s society. In recent years, she has collaborated with various cultural institutions, designed courses on contemporary art, co-developed curatorial residencies together with Artsvit Gallery (Dnipro, Ukraine), and co-edited a special issue about Ukrainian art and society after 2014 at the invitation of Obieg Magazine. Tatiana also became a member of the curatorial team of the International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine antiwarcoalition.art.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Yulia Kostereva is an artist and curator. She lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine, but is currently located in Warsaw, Poland, where she is coordinating the Emergency Residencies program to support cultural workers seeking a refuge from the war.

Yulia works with installations, objects and joint actions, history and stories related to a place, an object or a person. Her practice encompasses visual arts and the art of interaction.

Together with the artist Yuriy Kruchak, Yulia co-founded the art platform Open Place which has been operating in Kyiv since 1999. She studied at the theatre stage design department of the Kharkiv State Art School, the graphics department of the Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute, and the graphics department of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture.

Ukraine
Lviv

Kateryna Kravchuk is a certified facilitator and co-founder of Lanka.pro. She worked as a program manager, researcher and evaluation expert for multiple projects focusing on culture, creative economy, and local development.  Since 2017, Kateryna has been a workshop associate for the Creative Enterprise Ukraine Programme. Since 2020, she has also been a member of the International Association of Facilitators.

Currently, Kateryna is based in Lviv, Ukraine. She has a background in cultural studies and economics, and her professional interest includes cross-sector cooperation in culture, system innovations, and sustainable development.

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Poland / Ukraine

Yulia Krivich is a visual artist, activist, and curator. Her practice is based on a post-artistic approach and community-building activities. Through her work, she explores issues related to language, migration, and postcolonial theory. Yulia is co-founder of the Solidarity Community Center Słonecznik (Sunflower) at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw as well as a member of the Soniakh Digest, a digital platform that researches contemporary info-war and geopolitics from the perspective of Eastern Europe. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions in Ukraine, Poland, and internationally. In 2022, Yulia presented within the Ukrainian program at Documenta 15.

Yulia graduated from the Department of Architecture at the State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Dnipro, Ukraine, and from the Faculty of Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Originally from Dnipro, she currently lives in Warsaw.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Yuriy Kruchak is an artist whose professional interests include interdisciplinary and post‑artistic practices, intensification of connections between the artistic process and various strata of modern society. He works on the fringes between art and social studies, and his practice addresses the relationship of art to reality , with a special focus on the relationship of the artist to the audience. Yuriy also works as a curator and organizer. He is a co-founder of the interdisciplinary platform Open Place in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Yuriy’s artistic strategies depend on a specific issue and often engage different communities in the creative process. His works in public spaces transform the audience into the actors, creating a community whose behavior and interaction serves to interpret and reveal social structures in an urban environment.

Yuriy studied Scenography at Kharkiv State Art College (1989 -1991), Environmental design at the Kharkiv art-industrial institute (currently Kharkiv State academy of Design and Arts) (1991-1996). He received a Master degree in Painting from the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv (1999). Got the scholarship Gaude Polonia (National Center for Culture Poland) in 2018.

Ukraine
Kyiv

Lesia Kulchynska, PhD, is a Kyiv-based art curator and visual studies researcher currently affiliated with Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History. She taught Cultural Studies and Media Studies at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts, worked as a researcher at Pinchuk Art Center, as well as a curator at the Visual Culture Research Center and Set Independent Art Space (Kyiv). Lesia curated the The School of the Lonesome chapter at The Kyiv Biennial 2015 “The School of Kyiv”.

In 2018-19, she was a Fulbright Scholar residing at New York University. Her research interests are the theory and history of the image.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Maria Lanko is a curator and researcher focusing on the (unwritten) history of Ukrainian contemporary art. She is co-founder of The Naked Room, a space in Kyiv that integrates a gallery with a bookshop and a bar. The gallery program focuses on emerging artists with an ambition to introduce them in the art market both nationally and internationally. The Naked Room collaborates with several established artists and/or estates to procure recognition of their early work and archives as well as revisit forgotten or unrealized projects. As part of this practice, in 2022 in collaboration with Lizaveta German and Borys Filonenko, Maria co-curated the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. The exhibition traced a 30-year history of “Fountain of Exhaustion” by Pavlo Makov and produced the piece for the first time since its conception. (In this Art Margins interview, Maria talks about the journey to evacuate the artwork for the Biennale at the beginning of the russian war against Ukraine.) She lives and works in Kyiv. 

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Photo by Oleh Pashkovsky

Ukraine
Lviv

Anastasiia Manuliak is the head of Visual Culture at the Ukrainian Institute, where she represents the Visual Arts sector and runs several programs, including the international exhibition support program Visualise. Prior to joining the Institute in 2019, she worked as a cultural manager and independent curator. In 2019, she co-curated the National Biennale for Young Art “Looks like I’m Entering Our Garden” in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Anastasiia is a graduate of the FLEX exchange program funded by the US government. She also graduated with honors from the Department of History and Theory of Arts at the Lviv National Academy of Arts and the Department of Economics and Management at the European University in Kyiv. She is one of the art experts who participated at the Ukrainian Culture Foundation in 2022.

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Ukraine
Kyiv

Natalia Matsenko is an independent curator, art critic, and lecturer who lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Natalia curated the exhibition “UNFOLDING LANDSCAPES: Landscape and Poetics in Contemporary Ukrainian Art” (Art Center Silkeborg Bad, Denmark / Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels / Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswil, Switzerland, 2022). She also curated the public program and exhibition “Let’s talk about something else” (Kunstmuseum Bochum, Germany, 2022). Since 2018, she has been cooperating with the Landart Symposium “Mohrytsia: The Border Space”, and was a co-curator of the exhibition “Larger Space” (CCA YermilovCenter, Kharkiv, 2019), and of the project “SO WHAT ABOUT THE MAMMOTH? Mohrytsia Epilogue” (The Naked Room Gallery, Kyiv, 2021).

Natalia’s past curatorial projects include an international art residency BIRUCHIY Contemporary Art Project (“The Habitable Zone”, 2013; “Irshansk. Recreation”, 2015; “From a Common Root”, 2016 (Klementowice, Poland / Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv); BIRUCHIY TRANSCARPATHIA 022. ART WAR (2022, The House of Social Innovation, Warszawa), and others.

Born in Cherkasy, Ukraine, Natalia graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts with a master’s degree in theory and history of art.

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Acknowledgements

ArtsLink Assembly 2022 is produced by CEC ArtsLink (New York, USA) and Ukrainian Institute (Kyiv, Ukraine), in partnership with Open Place (Kyiv, Ukraine). 
Livestream is produced and supported by HowlRound.com
 ArtsLink Assembly 2022 is hosted by Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland.
ArtsLink Assembly 2022 is made possible by support from the Culture of Solidarity-EUNIC Ukraine Fund, in partnership with the European Cultural Foundation and EUNIC with core financing led by the Goethe Institut; the Trust for Mutual Understanding; and the Kirby Family Foundation.

Kirby Family Foundation