From November 9, 2023, to February 25, 2024, a contemporary art exhibition titled “Coexisting with Darkness” will be held at the 'Mystetskyi Arsenal' in Kyiv. This exhibition reflects on last year's power outages in Ukraine. The announcement was made on the 'Mystetskyi Arsenal' official page.
“Coexisting with Darkness” is about what all of us had to learn, starting from October 2022 and for many months when Russia systematically shelled critical infrastructure in Ukraine, leading to rolling power outages and disruptions in water, heating, and communication services," explain the organizers. During that time, 'Points of Unbreakable Resilience' were opened across the country, and art, which usually reflects societal changes, faced new challenges while being without power for an extended period.
"When livable spaces are reduced to 'Points of Unbreakable Resilience,' it revitalizes artist Fedor Tetianich's dream of an autonomous life space, a biotechnosphere that can withstand the cosmic cold," say the exhibition's curators Anton Usanov and Natasha Chichasova.
The exhibition seeks to answer the question of what art should be in the conditions of power outages to ensure that it does not "disappear in the darkness."
During the exhibition’s opening, at 7 PM, a performance by the artist Maksym Khodak will take place in the space of his installation. Within it, the artist will recreate the experience of a screening in a cinema without electricity, as it was during the constantly happening blackouts in 2022. The artist simulates a blackout situation in a movie theater when a film that has not been shown to the end exists only in the oral accounts of those who were at the interrupted screening. For this, the artist will retell the film that the audience was supposed to watch. The film “Zlyva”/”Flood” (1929) by Ivan Kavaleridze, which is currently considered lost, will be shown.
You can visit the exhibition from November 9, 2023, to February 25, 2024.
Working hours: Wednesday-Sunday, from 12 PM to 7 PM.
On the opening day, November 9, the exhibition will be open from 6 PM to 9 PM.
The exhibition was created in partnership with Art Arsenal Community NGO as part of the project funded by aid from the governments of Canada, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
