“One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk”: Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal presents new exhibition
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 are the surrounding images rooted in our minds?
The Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” presents the exhibition “One with the other. Spatial dialogues. Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk” — the third exhibition of the project “One with the other. Spatial Dialogues”.
The exhibition will be held at the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” (10 Lavrska Street) from January 26 to February 26, 2023.
The exhibition of the works of Karina Synytsia and Nastasiia Leliuk attempts to expand the hard topics: 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 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?
The gallery space is divided into two parts. The first hall of the exhibition is a public area — a space of insecurity and destruction. Here there is a constant threat from all sides. You become vulnerable due to the very fact of entering the collective, due to opening up to the world. The second exhibition hall is a controlled area where an unsteady sense of security appears; it is a space that you create yourself. Thanks to the curtains embroidered by artists, you feel safe here, even secretive. These textile objects are a reminder of the native home, a reproduction of its presence.
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.
At the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal” the exhibition will be held from January 26 to February 26, 2023.
Opening hours:
Tuesday-Sunday, 12:00 – 18:00
Free admission
❗️ In case of emergency power outages, we will additionally inform you about the opening hours on our social media.
‼️ We care about everyone’s safety, so in case of an air raid alert, the exhibition will be closed. At this time, you can go to the nearest shelter. The exhibition will start working after the end of an air raid alert.
Nastasiia Leliuk (Luhansk) is a Ukrainian artist. She studied at the Luhansk Art College. After the war started in 2014, she left Luhansk and continued her studies at Dnipro Theatre and Art College. Graduated from the National Academy of Fine Art (NAOMA) with a degree in monumental painting in 2019. In her practice, she tries to play with objective truth and global cultural narratives through daily, recognisable elements. She often creates a situation in which the viewer is confronted with the limits of one’s perception and has to reconsider one’s position.
Karina Sinytsia (Sievierodonetsk) is a Ukrainian artist living and working in Kyiv. From 2015 to 2019, she studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Kharkiv Art School with a degree in painting teaching. Her practice is based on reflecting human feelings. In her works, the artist reproduces these states, placing them in constructed images of landscapes consisting of fragments of her memories.
“One with the other. Spatial Dialogues” is a processual project of the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.” 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. This array of works has transformed into an online archive — Ukraine Ablaze. While working on the archive, Laboratory curators realized the importance of recording processes and transformations in artistic practices, which often remain invisible.