THE ART SCENE: Ukraine at the 49th Venice Biennale (07/22/01)

THE ART SCENE: Ukraine at the 49th Venice Biennale

by Olesya Ostrovska
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - One of the largest international festivals of contemporary art opened on June 9 in Venice: the 49th Biennale. Fifty countries were represented, among them Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Weekly has already published two articles on the preparation of the Ukrainian presentation. To sum up: in September of last year, Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and the Arts accepted an invitation to present Ukrainian art at the Biennale; Evhen Karas was appointed the commissioner; Yuri (Jerzy) Onuch, director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Kyiv, was selected as the curator; and in September a working group of which I was a member began the preparations. The Masoch Fund (founded by Ihor Podolchak and Ihor Diurych) were chosen as the participating artists. From the moment of Mr. Onuch's appointment as curator, another group of artists, headed by Valentyn Rayevsky, began protesting his appointment on the grounds that Mr. Onuch is not a Ukrainian citizen (he has dual Canadian and Polish citizenship).

At the beginning of March of this year, Mr. Rayevsky and his colleagues, including his wife Olha Malentii, Arsen Savadov, Oleh Tistol and Yurii Solomka, were joined by the Artists' Union of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in their demands for Mr. Onuch's replacement, also referring to his non-citizen status. In mid-March, less than three months before the Biennale opening, through the personal intervention of then Vice Prime Minister Mykola Zhulynskyi, the commissioner was replaced by Oleksandr Fedoruk, head of the government Agency for the Control of the Transfer of Cultural Treasures across the Borders of Ukraine, while Mr. Rayevsky was appointed curator. The new list of artists for the national presentation was composed of Mr. Rayevsky, Ms. Malentii, Mr. Savadov, Mr. Tistol, Mr. Solomko and Serhii Panych.

It was no wonder that the preparations of the Ukrainian presentation evoked widespread interest. Thanks to a grant from the Renaissance Foundation, at the beginning of June a group of 20 journalists and art critics, including this writer, set off from Kyiv for Venice to take part in the official opening week for guests and the press.

The fact that over 50 countries were represented at the Biennale - where just the International Exhibition (separate from the national pavilions) was 3.5 kilometers in length - and the fact that there were 3,500 accredited journalists, partly explains why the participating countries tried to present universal and generally accessible projects. Most national pavilions did this - few presented groups of artists or works focused on the local context, which would be unintelligible to an international audience.

But the Ukrainian pavilion, curated by Mr. Rayevsky, was assembled according to its own principles.

Ukraine does not have its own pavilion in Venice, as most national pavilions were built in the first half of the 20th century. Countries which do not have their own buildings rent premises outside the Giardini di Castello, where the national pavilions are located. This was done by countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Taiwan, Croatia and others.

The Ukrainian delegation decided to compensate for the absence of its own pavilion by the concept of the exhibit itself. Outside the fence of the Giardini di Castello, an army tent was set up, inside which, according the Biennale catalogue, there should have been a panorama of a Ukrainian landscape and works by the participating artists. What I saw, on the official opening day, was the following: installed inside the tent was a diorama with a landscape containing village cottages, high wire electrical towers and, at one end, the smokestacks of a factory, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the Chornobyl reactor. The other end of the diorama ended with a decorative woven wooden fence and sunflowers.

As explained by participating artist Mr. Savadov, the intention was ironic and the irony resulted from the fact that, unlike other countries, whose pavilions were built in the Giardini, the Ukrainian tent stood outside the fence of the rich world. There was a conceptual framework to the contents of the tent as well: such artists as Mr. Savadov or Mr. Tistol, who are famous in Ukraine, had refused to exhibit in their own individual style and had ordered the preparation of a diorama from an art collective - a remnant of the old Soviet art infrastructure.

According to the artists involved, all this was supposed to underline the underground aspect of their art. This claim was included in the description provided in the English- language brochure of the Ukrainian exhibit: "At the crossroads of the epochs, the everlasting dialogue of the art with the society, and the encounters of the orthodox 'official' art with the underground, within which we all function to date, have melted into a fascinating conglomerate. The principle of cosmic energy pulsation, which forms arrhythmic construct with explicit space and time 'hinges', is also in effect within this framework."

The brochure also listed the institutions that provided support to the presentation: Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Ministry of Culture and Arts, Artists' Union of Ukraine and the Ukrainian National Academy of Arts.

Oleksander Roitburd, from Odesa, who participated in the International Exhibition, had this to say about the Ukrainian presentation: "These artists have committed artistic suicide."

The Kyiv art historian Oleksii Tatarenko, in an interview in the newspaper Den, described his opinion of the Ukrainian exhibit as follows: "My impression was one of a total misreading of the context and a completely senseless organization of our participation."

Natalia Filonenko, a Kyiv curator, was harsher in her assessment: "This pseudo-cynical course is not cool at all. In the context of the Biennale, our tent looks pathetic."

On the other hand, the official press announcement by the government information agency, printed in the June 12, issue of Uriadovyi Kurier sounded a positive note:

"An elevated atmosphere reigned over the official opening ceremony of the 49th Venice Biennale. The well-known artist-curator of the Ukrainian project, Valentyn Rayevsky, noted that the presentation of Ukrainian art in Venice was a fact. 'We don't as yet have our own pavilion here, but the resolution of this question will be the following step in our integration into the new artistic and cultural space. We have a competitive project; it contrasts strongly with the other projects at the Biennale because it does not show modernist achievements. It is a very warm and lively program - an army tent of huge proportions in which we show a diorama of a Ukrainian landscape. It is a sign of home, a symbol of our culture. In six windows, on the outside of the tent, six television screens demonstrate the realities of our life, the realities of the socio-political character and art of six artists, participants of the Ukrainian project - V. Rayevsky, A. Savadov, O. Tistol, Yu. Solomko, O. Malentii, S. Panych. The first Ukrainian project lives and is successful,' noted Valentyn Rayevsky."

After several critical articles appeared in Den, Mr. Rayevsky contacted the newspaper and gave the following explanation of the project he curated: "In the last 10 years I have been observing the development of this event and can point to the total absence of progressive tendencies both in the Biennale itself and in the world space that is represented here - there is an interruption in the development of the language of culture, a development such a large scale event should have represented. In my opinion, our project is a welcome contrast to the rich, glittery pavilions of the developed countries. Its energy comes from its eclecticism, incompatibility of premises and conflict on several levels: first of all - on the internal one - between the army tent and the idyllic landscape inside; secondly - on the external one - the significance of the object against the background of the Biennale. The aim was to create exactly such a dramatically accented situation, and we achieved it successfully."

After the publication of Mr. Rayevsky's comments, Oleksander Soloviev, one of Ukraine's best known art critics, said: "The Ukrainian presentation missed the point of the Biennale, but neither was it marginal in the true philosophical meaning of this word. It turned out to be merely archaic, another example of aggressive incompetence."

Yuri Onuch and the Masoch Fund artists - Messrs. Diurych and Podolchak - were present at the opening of the Biennale. They are now working on the production of the exhibit originally slated to be the Ukrainian presentation at the Biennale, which will now be shown in Kyiv at the CCA gallery under the title "Ukrainian Pavilion." International art critics, curators and journalists have been invited to the opening in December.

According to Mr. Onuch, this exhibit will be an attempt to bring part of the aura of the Venice Biennale to Ukraine and give international art professionals a chance to become acquainted with the Ukrainian art community. After what he saw as an unsuccessful presentation in Venice, he said it is necessary to strengthen direct contacts between international art circles and the Ukrainian art community, without recourse to old, post-Soviet art institutions.

With the opening of the "Ukrainian Pavilion" exhibit, the CCA is planning to arrange a gathering, to be called the Ukrainian Art Forum which, it is hoped, will become a coalition of artistic, non-governmental institutions and will serve as a spokesman for their interests. The situation around the Biennale, where the fate of the Ukrainian presentation was decided by the intrusion of the Artists' Union and the personal interference of Vice Prime Minister Zhunlyskyi, shows the weakness of Ukrainian non-governmental institutions. The formation of a coalition to protect their interests should aid in the development of a Ukrainian third sector (that is, non-governmental and non-commercial) in the sphere of culture.

The director of the Ukrainian Mime Center, Oleksander Chaika, commented: "Through many years, the situation in the field of culture has remained unchanged, leading to entropy - talented, creatively active personalities are dissipating in search of a future abroad or in business. The necessity of creating an association that will speak for the interests of independent artists and art institutions has been obvious for a long time."

If such a body is set up, there will be some public scrutiny of the actions of the Ukrainian government and government-dependent institutions with respect to culture. And the next Ukrainian presentation at the Venice Biennale could be organized in less strained circumstances and without the personal interference of the nomenklatura, resulting in a more positive reception.

[Note: The official catalogue of the Venice Biennale contains four pages and several photographs of the "Ukrainian presentation." The photos show works of the participating artists, mostly installations, with an army tent background, making it appear that these installations were in Venice. In fact, the photos are digital constructions; there was no art in the Ukrainian tent in Venice other than the diorama. The tent was very small; it became crowded with three people in it. Only after the official opening were six television screens installed to show previous exhibits of the participating artists. - Oksana Zakydalsky]

Olesya Ostrovska is assistant to the director of the Center for Contemporary Art, Kyiv. She was in Venice during the opening week of the Biennale. The article above was written in Ukrainian and translated by Oksana Zakydalsky.

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