One with the other. Spatial Dialogues

"One with the other. Spatial Dialogues" is a processual project of the Laboratory of Contemporary Art "Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal". It is the result of discussions between the members of the artistic community.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the Laboratory has begun to collect works about the war by Ukrainian artists — from 2014 till today. Since any archive implies the subjective principle of constructing knowledge, it was important for us to make it inclusive and horizontal, giving authors the opportunity to talk about each other's creative practices. This is how the series of video conversations "One with the other. Conversations about artistic practices" came to be.

We offer artists to continue their reflections in the physical space of the Mala Gallery. The space itself has remained unchanged since February 24 and preserves artefacts from the gallery's last exhibition project — the exhibition "Close" by photographer Taras Bychko. We offer artists to react to those works and texts that remained in the space. In this way, we encourage the participants of the project to rethink their artistic practices and the impact of a full-scale war on them. Each subsequent exhibition of the project will develop already-created dialogues and situations and resonate with previous themes. Participants will leave certain objects from the previous project, creating a polyphony of voices and reflections. 

SEVENTH DIALOGUE
“My room dissolves into your walls when the sunlight falls”

“My room dissolves into your walls when the sunlight falls” is the seventh exhibition in a series between artists within the project “One with the other. Spatial dialogues”. The exhibition will be held from December 21 to January 14, 2024.

The works by the two artists form a common environment where the qualities of time and the mechanisms of memory are to be observed. 
In Dariia Kuzmych's interactive installation time and methods of interactions between objects and the body are intertwined with ephemeral living spaces. Delving into the systems of such interactions form a hybrid space where the Sun is an active co-author. In Maryna Makarenko's video work, the idea of ​​the Sun goes on to exist as an impulse for speculative considerations about corporeality, time and histories, personal and collective, real and fictional.

The layering of the Sun's rays and focus of attention work as reinforcement in fragile structures: body, light, interaction with the Other. Through the layering of common focuses of attention, a co-created space with defined fragments of reliability unfolds.

Exhibition participants: Dariia Kuzmych and Maryna Makarenko.

SIXTH DIALOGUE
“One with the other. Spatial dialogues. IMMINENTLY”

“One with the other. Spatial dialogues. IMMINENTLY” is the sixth exhibition in the series of dialogues between artists within the project.

At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from September 14 to October 15, 2023.

This exhibition is an attempt to grasp the feelings experienced by the artists just before the Russia-Ukraine full-scale war and during the blackouts of late 2022. These two periods, although separated in time, are permeated with anxious premonition — anticipating the Russian full-scale invasion and adapting everyday life to the power outage schedule.

The inability to influence the situation creates a tension between helplessness and the desire to resist. Nevertheless, artists discover a zone of control amid constant insecurity, interpreting their uncertainty.

Exhibition participants: Volt Agapeyev and Dima Tolkachov.

The exhibition was created in partnership with Art Arsenal Community NGO as part of the project supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.

FIFTH DIALOGUE
One with the other. Spatial dialogues. geography of displacement

“One with the other. Spatial dialogues. geography of displacement” is the fifth exhibition in a series of such dialogues. At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from May 5 to May 28, 2023.

For this exhibition, artists Yaroslav Futymskyi and Anton Sayenko, who were invited to the dialogue, create a space for a collective conversation about land, landscape, language, and germination. Since art is a language, now, living together through the war experience and thinking about the role of art in times of disaster, we are all talking about the same thing in one way or another. 

Exhibition participants: Kateryna Aliinyk, Nikita Kadan, Vitalii Kokhan, Krystyna Melnyk, Nigel Rolfe, Anton Sayenko, Yaroslav Futymskyi.

The exhibition was created in partnership with Art Arsenal Community NGO as part of the project supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.

FOURTH DIALOGUE
One with the other. Spatial Dialogues. Viktoriia Rosentsveih and Asya Harmash

“One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Viktoriia Rosentsveih and Asya Harmash” is the fourth exhibition in a series of such dialogues. At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from March 30 to April 30, 2023.

Within the framework of the exhibition, authors Victoria Rosenzweig and Asya Garmash reflect on the state of waiting that connects their creative practices. The state when time slows down and each of us feels it permanently. This was restless anticipation of a full-scale war, the probability of which was challenging for many to grasp. However, now, in retrospect, it seemed inevitable. These are the viscous and gummy circumstances of searching your art subjects and struggling to comprehend what your artistic practice is. These are unbearable moments when you are waiting for news from the family after the official reports of shelling, waiting for photos of the consequences of the air strikes, to see what survived and what was destroyed by the Russians. It is uncertain and full of bitter hope expectation of the de-occupation of Nova Kakhovka and all of Ukraine.

After February 24 of last year, Viktoriia focused on the depiction of the Kherson region in the war and occupation chronicles from the words of her relatives, but again, mostly recording the tragic changes in the body of the city. Asya, in turn, admits that for a long time, she has been romanticising the aesthetics of Soviet architecture in a way. February 24 provoked a complete reassessment of her practice, and from the summer of 2022, she began to create works, diving deep within herself and working with images of rootedness, time, and what disappears.

Another important aspect of the exhibition is involving small home-made publications compiled by authors, so-called zines. These self-printed and stitched books are something distinctly material and very intimate. They are something you can put in your pocket when going out, lend to a friend, or leave in your favourite coffee shop. They are handed over spontaneously, avoid the usual distribution schemes, and often find their readers randomly. Viktoriia notes that in recent years there have been a lot of zines in her life - both others' and her own as well as her participation in various collective zines. Such a trend seems to be quite crucial for the Ukrainian alternative book culture and the networking between hermetic creative communities.

Exhibition participants: Viktoriia Rosentsveih, Asya Harmash.
Curators of the exhibition: Natasha Chychasova, Andrii Myroshnychenko, Anastasia Garazd.

The exhibition was created in partnership with Art Arsenal Community NGO as part of the project supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.

THIRD DIALOGUE
One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk

"One with the other. Spatial Dialogues. Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk" is the third exhibition in a series of such dialogues. At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from January 26 to February 26, 2023.

When the enemy appears on the border, you feel what’s yours most acutely. What shapes you, what is close, and what is not; how deeply the surrounding images are rooted in our minds? At the same time, how volatile and vulnerable these images are and how painful it is to lose them. Now there is no confidence in your safety, the safety of your loved ones, or the safety of everything you have. The material world has become too unstable and fragile, reduced to memories of places, landscapes, and objects that are often impossible to reproduce in imagination and find physically.

However, all things become heroes of their circumstances. Objects around us, their condition and location testify to time. Cities and towns under occupation, scorched houses and apartments, black voids of windows, burnt fields, and crushed concrete constitute the material circulation of war. Looking at the endless flow of destruction, in which you can no longer distinguish ruination from ruins, you suddenly ask yourself: how can rough surfaces and cold metal, something that looks so uncomfortable from the outside, become close and give a feeling of security?

This exhibition of the works of Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk attempts to expand the hard topics the artists talked about in the video conversation from the "One with the other" series in the Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal. This range included awareness of the war’s scale, living in pain and its excess, loss of home, and the disappearance of the usual world. These fragments make up all of us today — both when alone and when among people. We are caring when we love and uncompromising when we stand up for ourselves.
The gallery space is divided into two parts: public — an area of insecurity and destruction; private is a controlled area where an unsteady sense of security appears, a space that you create yourself.

The exhibition also includes photographs of people hiding in shelters. These were the elements of the previous Mala Gallery project called "One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Dreamscape" by graphic designer Dasha Podoltseva, architect Yelena Orap, and composer Oleksiy Shmurak. In this case, the common refrain is a comfortable personal space and the trauma of its violent absence.

Exhibition participants: Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk.
Curators of the exhibition: Natasha Chychasova, Andrii Myroshnychenko, and Nadiia Chervinska.

The exhibition was created in partnership with Art Arsenal Community NGO as part of the project supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.

SECOND DIALOGUE
One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Dreamscape

"One with the other. Spatial Dialogues. Dreamscape" is the second exhibition in a series of such dialogues. At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from December 2 to December 29, 2022.

Dreamscape is a project by architect Elena Orap, graphic designer Dasha Podoltseva, and composer and sound artist Oleksiy Shmurak. The name means a landscape of dreams or daydreams but also refers to the word “escape.” The installation is a metaphorical recreation of a sleeping bag or blanket as a safe space. A small sound speaker is placed inside the structure, from which a soundscape of a surreal, dreamy nature quietly sounds. This musical part of the project is participatory. Authors announced an open call to collect music samples and sounds that, for the last nine months, have helped people in shelters and evacuation. The composer transformed these musical stories into a coherent soundscape with the logic of a dream — with unexpected transitions, meaningless repetitions, and strange lacunae.
Dreamscape space offers an act of collective therapy and reflection, in which memories meet with reflection and care for others and for oneself.

In this exhibition project, Dreamscape builds artistic continuity by resonating with the work of Tamara Turlyun "Spokiynoi Nochi" (Goodnight).

Art collective: Elena Orap, Dasha Podoltseva, Oleksiy Shmurak
Curators: Andrii Myroshnychenko, Nadiia Chervinska, Natasha Chychasova

Technical support: Vasyl Hrubliak, Serhii Zapadnia, Viktor Kharkevych, Olha Kozyrieva, Serhii Diptan
Dreamscape Communication: Vlad Holovko

Organisational support: EASA Ukraine

The project was supported as a result of the open competition (re)connection UA, a pilot project created by the NGO «Museum of Contemporary Art» in partnership with UNESCO and financed by the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund.

FIRST DIALOGUE
One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun

"One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun" is the first exhibition in a series of such dialogues. Before the full-scale aggression of Russia, Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun were planning a small and quiet exposition about the Holosiivskyi district in the residential area of Darnytsia. In winter, in their self-organised artistic space depot12_59, the project "District Ghostology" was supposed to take place. It was meant to tell about urban landscapes and the silent ghosts hiding beneath them. Among the displayed works, a neon pharmacy cross, a unified symbol of the residential areas, was to be. within this project, there was noticeable anxiety and anticipation of what stunned everyone on February 24.

The current expression in the Mala Gallery took shape around the idea of this unmade exhibition, i.e. the fragments of that future that never came. At the same time, it tries to build artistic continuity due to echoing the content that was in the gallery as of the evening of February 23. Shifting doubt, fear, and uncertainty have turned reality into one that is constantly disappearing, but even under the conditions of impossibility, different forms of compassion and new connections are possible.

As Inga says:

"Back then it was hard for me to say what these landscapes with sports grounds in the courtyards of high-rise buildings were about. I observed a certain mystical dimension in the space. It seemed to seep through everything. My colleague coined a perfect word for this phenomenon, this feeling — hauntology. Now, it seems, all the neighbourhoods are awake, and the ghosts are being chased away by the sound of sirens. Air alarm filled everything with itself and took the ghosts’ place. Maybe that's why I'm fascinated by its sound. Everything that was hidden became evident, and halftones went away."

The exhibition "One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun" reveals the commonality of artistic practices of two artists who are also friends. In particular, their togetherness is revealed through their shared experience of making mosaics. It also becomes an extension of their conversation about how to keep making art in spite of everything, how to regain what seems lost, and how to affirm life above unrest, turmoil, and death. The first project of the new exhibition cycle focuses on the authors' efforts to speak about their intimate experiences, to reconnect with the past, which now seems infinitely distant, and to overcome the ghosts that encroach on our inner security.

The first exhibition of the project of the Laboratory of Contemporary Art "Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal" titled "One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun" will last from November 3 to 24, 2022 at the Laboratory of Contemporary Art "Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal" (Kyiv, Lavrska St., 10).

Exhibition participants: Inga Levi and Tamara Turlyun.
Curators of the exhibition: Natasha Chychasova, Andrii Myroshnychenko, and Nadiia Chervinska.

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