Ukraine represented at 26th Biennial of contemporary art in São Paulo (11/28/04)

Ukraine represented at 26th Biennial of contemporary art in São Paulo

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - Yuri Onuch, director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv and the curator of the Ukrainian presentation at the 26th Biennial in São Paulo, Brazil, was in Toronto after attending the opening of the exhibit on September 25. The artist chosen to represent Ukraine at the São Paulo exhibit, which runs until December 19, was photographer Viktor Marushchenko.

The São Paulo Biennial is considered - with the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel - one of the most important festivals of contemporary art in the world. The theme of this year's biennial is "Image Smugglers in a Free Territory" and the show, as in 2002, is curated by Alfons Hug. Over 135 artists and artistic collectives from 55 countries are taking part.

The Ukrainian presentation, which is featured among the national representations, is called "Dreamland-Donbas" and echoes Mr. Hugs's ideas as outlined in his curatorial essay "Image Smugglers":

"In the context of the Biennial, we are interested in seeing how the destruction of the real world and interpersonal relations are reflected in art. Because works of art are more than bare facts, the artistic reinforcement of reality is never synonymous with and always more complex than a straight report ... Being immersed in conflicts, artists don't copy the world but create free territories in the midst of reality. With the help of metaphors and symbols, they transform raw everyday material into new states that one can experience emotionally. Works of art are allegories."

In his project, Mr. Marushchenko presents a series of photographs, taken in the winter of 2003-2004 in towns of the Donbas. The photographs feature lives of ordinary people who work and dream in their strange, almost surreal world. The photographs portray "bare facts," transforming them into metaphors of life.

The photographs are mounted on three panels of landscape photo-wallpaper, popular in Ukrainian homes. Each panel of wallpaper - 100 centimeters wide and 70 centimeters high - is brightly colored, the photographs are in black and white. The photographs are grouped under three themes: women miners who dig for leftover bits of coal in abandoned, thus "illegal" mines, the women in settings of their homes; and the women "dressed up" to be photographed.

At both ends of the specially erected wall on which the presentation is displayed, is a large-size photograph of the "outside" - heaps of snow-covered coal hills, with tiny figures in the foreground, evoking the works of Breugel. Thus, the photographer becomes a "smuggler of images" from the history of art into today's everyday life. Like Breugel, Mr. Marushchenko transfers pictures of "grey existence" into a world of art, a world that idealizes reality.

Mr. Marushchenko, born in Novosibirsk in 1946, lives and works in Kyiv. He has shown his works widely, in Ukraine, Europe and Canada, in both solo and group exhibits (he was invited to the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001). The artist attended the opening of the São Paulo Biennial and supervised the installation of the presentation.

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