The Ukrainian Institute and the curatorial association OK Projects presented an online exhibition in the format of a game - The Fantastic Adventure through Art History of Ukraine.
The game is available for free in two languages, it tells what happened to art in today's Ukraine between 1920-2020, and each participant can choose how to respond to historical events with the help of works. The curatorial selection contains artists who have been actively working on socio-political topics for the last 100 years. The online exhibition presents works by 20 Ukrainian artists, including: Mykhailo Boychuk, Oleksandra Exter, Serhiy Hryhoriev, Alla Horska, Nikolai Karabinovych, Fedir Tetyanych (Fripulya) and others.
"When creating the game, it was important for us to encourage both the general public and the profile audience. Therefore, in the project The Fantastic Adventure through Art History of Ukraine there are several layers: for a user unfamiliar with Ukrainian art, the game must be played several times to find all the artists; the artistic community can critically examine the connections between artists and the non-inclusion of individual actors relevant to the context, and those interested in historical processes can find new “Easter eggs†in the illustrations each time they pass", noted by the project curator Ksenia Malykh and Valeria Schiller.
The player finds himself in the role of artist and art critic at the same time: the responsibility for creating the history of Ukrainian art.
“The recent history of Ukrainian art is not set in stone, it is an ongoing process, and it is all the more interesting to be aparticipant in it. This is what the game “The Fantastic Adventure through Art History of Ukraine†offers: an adventure with many scenarios of unfolding events that we choose ourselves. The game tells one hundred years story where Ukrainian art is not only formed as an original phenomenon under the influence of internal social and political contexts, but also remains an integral part of European and world cultural processes. Therefore, the project will be interesting to both international and Ukrainian audiences.†says Oleksandr Vynogradov, Head of Visual Art at the Ukrainian Institute.Â
The project was developed by the curatorial association OK Projects, the agency BILESUHE and Photinus Studio. Project curators - Ksenia Malykh, Valeria Schiller, illustrator - Daniil Revkovsky. The project is part of #UkraineEverywhere - the programme of the Ukrainian Institute for the Presentation of Visual Culture of Ukraine online.
