Taras Polataiko represents Ukraine at the 25th Bienale de Sao Paolo (04/28/02)

Taras Polataiko represents Ukraine at the 25th Bienale de Sao Paolo

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - Chernivtsi-born artist Taras Polataiko officially represented Ukraine at the Bienale de Sao Paolo in Brazil. The exhibit, which runs from March 23 to June 2, features 190 artists from 70 countries and last year celebrated its 50th anniversary. Together with the Venice Biennale and Dokumenta (held every five years in Kassen, Germany) the Bienale de Sao Paolo makes up the trio of the most important international contemporary art exhibits.

Like Venice, Sao Paolo follows the national pavilion where the national contributions are curated and financed by the country of origin and which enables one to keep up with the evolution of a particular country's art. This is especially significant in the case of nations which have been off the flight itinerary of most art critics.

Jerzy Onuch, director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, was invited to curate the presentation from Ukraine and he chose Mr. Polataiko as the artist. On his way through Toronto back to Kyiv from Sao Paolo, Mr. Onuch provided information and photos of the exhibit.

Mr. Polataiko was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and since 1989 has lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He has been on the art scenes of both Canada and Ukraine. Mr. Polataiko began receiving international attention after he was named as one of the Ten Artists to Watch Worldwide by ARTnews in 1995.

Sao Paolo is the largest city in South America and, with a metropolitan population of 17 million, is the world's third largest city. The venue for the Bienale was built in the mid 1950s by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the chief architect of the city of Brasilia and former collaborator of Le Corbusier. An industrial pavilion built out of reinforced concrete, the size of six football fields, it provides a modernist setting for the works of art. The theme of this year's exhibit is "Metropolitan Iconography," and artists were invited to explore the image of the metropolis in contemporary art as well as the way currents of urban energy influence contemporary art.

Apart from the national pavilions, the Bienale featured 11 metropolises - Sao Paolo, Caracas, New York, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney, London, Berlin and Moscow - with five artists representing each city. For the visual arts, the Bienal de Sao Paulo avoids the Eurocentrism of other international shows and focuses its attention on the new metropolises which in the last decades have mushroomed throughout Asia, Africa and South America.

Mr. Polataiko's show is titled "Bird's Eye View." Images of infrared satellite photos of the 11 cities featured were downloaded from the Internet, printed, mounted on reinforced vinyl and cut into standard commercial jigsaw puzzle patterns. Eleven mirrors were mounted on the walls of the exhibit space and 11 local workers were hired to gradually cover the mirrors by piecing together the jigsaw puzzles until the puzzles - 120cm by 120cm in bright red and blue - were completed. The workers began a day before the opening and worked for several days on completing the works.

During the process of putting together the puzzles, each of the works acquired a different configuration, depending on the method adopted by the person completing it. The continuous process proved popular with the spectators as it provided an element of interaction. The puzzles were not labeled and, divorced from their content, became abstract images and posed the question of the relationship between the content of the image and its formal properties.

Mr. Polataiko was fortunate in securing a prime location for his work - immediately after the entrance to the building. It assured the artist good exposure and the interactive element invited reflective interest. The Brazilian press was impressed. O Globo (Rio de Janeiro, March 25) - Rio's largest circulation paper - commented: "In the first weekend of the Bienale the interactive projects were 'popularity champions.' Right at the entrance to the pavilion, the big success was the installation of the Ukrainian Taras Polataiko, which invited the spectators to mount jigsaw puzzles over mirrors, resulting in the fragmentation of the image" The Jornal Da Tarde from Sao Paolo (March 25) wrote: "In the entertainment section, few installations were as successful as that of the Ukrainian artist Taras Polataiko titled 'Bird's Eye View'"

If one of the aims of taking part in such large scale international events is to be noticed by the public and the critics, particularly for countries that are only now joining the international art scene, then Mr. Polataiko's participation can be deemed a success for Ukraine.

Mr. Polataiko's participation was made possible through the support of the Saskatchewan Arts Board and The Canada Council. Canadian journalist George Hawrylyshyn, now living in Rio, helped the curator and the artist in obtaining local contacts.

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