The Mystetskyi Arsenal Presented the Exhibition “Olena Turyanska. Agape. Absolute Love”
The holistic space created by the artist Olena Turyanska is represented in the five halls of the Old Arsenal building. Here, her memory, the memories of people she knows and the way of recording stories have formed a coherent narrative. This is the first personal exhibition in the space of the Old Arsenal building since 2021.
The exhibition will be open until February 2, 2025.
According to ancient Greek philosophers, the notion of agape, which gave the exhibition its name, denotes the highest form of love — unconditional and all-encompassing, broader than personal. Such which is rather embodied as volitional, arises not through rational evaluation and gives value to the other through caring for them.
Curators of the project: Oksana Barshynova, Olga Zhuk.
With the project Olena Turyanska. Agape. Absolute Love the Mystetskyi Arsenal continues the program of representation of prominent names in the recent history of Ukrainian art. It started in the spring of 2017 with Oleksandr Hnylytsky’ personal exhibition Reality of Illusion. The exhibitions Kirill Protsenko. Impassioned (2018), Oleg Holosiy. Non-Stop Painting (2019) and Andriy Sahaidakovsky. Scenery. Welcome! in the fall of 2020 continued it.
Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal:
“For many years the Mystetskyi Arsenal has been following a program line to present the figures that made the most significant contribution to contemporary Ukrainian art. Now, during the full-scale war, it is extremely important for us to tell ourselves, that is, the Ukrainian audience, what exactly is the most recent history of Ukrainian art. Who and how works here, what connections and ideas exist on the Ukrainian art scene, how the seeming ‘classics’ react to a completely new reality for all of us — the big war.”
The project is about the importance of the integrity of history, tradition, relations and at the same time about oneself, about the echo of the personal in the universal and vice versa. The exhibition consists of works created mainly in 2023-2024. Olena Turyanska embroidered, glued and cut during and between air-raid alarms, with thoughts about friends and acquaintances at and near the front line. Therefore, all works are imbued with very personal feelings.
“This project has the form of an open monograph. Olena inсludes a lot of stories in it — her own ones, the stories of her friends, conversations with them, what she has read. What we share and what people live by, their inner life, is important. It can be texts, poetry, and there is quite a lot of it in this project. Similarly, something personal will resonate with each of us at the exhibition, because it is the experience that we all go through. The experience of loss, sadness, emptiness, but at the same time — the experience of great love,” Olga Zhuk, the co-curator of the exhibition, comments.
Exhibition hours: Wednesday-Sunday, from 12 p.m. to 19 p.m. Educational events, excursions and workshops are planned within the project. Follow updates on the website and social networks of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.
❗ 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.
Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal
