Ukraine. A different angle on neighbourhood

Ukraine has been independent for thirty years. It is also close to us, bold, multifaceted and surprising. Equally so is the exhibition Ukraine. A different angle on neighbourhood, organised at the International Cultural Centre. Works that say so much about our closest neighbour have never been presented to the Polish audience before. This different angle on neighbourhood, where mutual perceptions of each other come into play, brings the two countries even closer together. 

A joint Polish-Ukrainian analysis of cultural and historical narratives referred to as “Ukrainian myths” encourages a reflection on contiguity of Ukraine and Poland, their history and their present in the perspective of neighbourhood and mutual understanding. They give an idea of the viability of myths and their contemporary incarnations. The narrative also collides sporadically with Russia and the Soviet Union, occasionally with Turkey and the Islamic world. It is illus 

Ukraine has been independent for thirty years. It is also close to us, bold, multifaceted and surprising. Equally so is the exhibition Ukraine. A different angleon neighbourhood, organised at the International Cultural Centre. Worksthat say so much about our closest neighbour have never been presented tothe Polish audience before. This different angle on neighbourhood, wheremutual perceptions of each other come into play, brings the two countrieseven closer together.

A joint Polish-Ukrainian analysis of cultural and historical narratives referredto as “Ukrainian myths” encourages a reflection on contiguity of Ukraine andPoland, their history and their present in the perspective of neighbourhoodand mutual understanding. They give an idea of the viability of myths and theircontemporary incarnations. The narrative also collides sporadically with Russiaand the Soviet Union, occasionally with Turkey and the Islamic world. It is illustrated with works of Ukrainian and Polish art; Orthodox, Uniate and Catholic; pre-modern, 20th-century and contemporary artworks.

– What prompts us to broaden our knowledge about Ukraine? Do we reach forbooks by Ukrainian authors, many of which have been published in Poland inrecent years, to understand our closest neighbours? I believe that many of usdo so, but to support this, it is important to supplement literary or historical textswith a visual story. When preparing the exhibition together with the National ArtMuseum of Ukraine in Kiev, we wished to present to the Polish public a visualself-portrait of our neighbours and the contemporary cultural context of mutual Polish-Ukrainian relations – explains Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, director of the ICC.

The role of the exhibition is at the same time educational and intended to pro-mote the culture and artists of Ukraine, who are little known in Poland. Manyof the works on display, most of which belong to the canon of Ukrainian art,will become a real discovery for the Polish audience – says Yulia Lytvynets, theDirector General of NAMU. Thus, she emphasises the great importance of theproject for the contemporary culture of Ukraine.

The exhibition intends to induce a sense of surprise and revelation by clashingunexpected mutual perceptions. Its curators were inspired by the exhibitionObok. Polska i Niemcy. 1000 lat historii w sztuce, which Anda Rottenberg cu-rated in 2016 at the Walter Gropius Bau in Berlin, where various Polish workswere juxtaposed with German ones, and proposed a multi-layered narrativewrapped around selected concepts from a shared Polish-Ukrainian imaginary.Next to the Cossacks and the Sarmatians, the artists featured at the exhibitionaddress also other myth-making themes: the endless steppe, the cottage, whichis a phenomenon of Ukrainian culture and national identity, the fertile “cher-nozem” soil, bread and hunger. Finally, the issue of the Ukrainian state and itsterritory, the way Ukrainians perceive themselves, and how they try to protectthemselves from the brutal pressure of their Russian neighbour.

The exhibition showcases the most outstanding artists, whose work is relatedto the main stages of the development of art, from the late 17th century to thepresent day. On display are the works of the Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko,the Polish masters such as Józef Brandt, Jan Stanisławski, Leon Wyczółkowski,and the Ukraine-born Russian realist Ilya Repin, who was fascinated with JanMatejko’s painting. The exhibition features Repin’s paintings: Ukrainian Kha-ta and Portrait of a Laughing Cossack, which is a sketch for the Reply of theZaporozhian Cossacks, a 1890 painting that has become a national icon inUkraine. These 19th-century canvases are juxtaposed with the works of theearly 20th-century artists – Heorhi Narbut, Victor Palmov, Lev Kramarenko –and contemporary artists, such as Oleg Tistol, Roman Minin, AnatolyKryvolap, Vlada Ralko or the “Open Group”, whose practice work addresses awide range of historical themes and social issues.

Ukraine is an independent country, yet one that is regionally very diverse, withthe political and cultural divisions of the past that persist to this day. The eventsof the Orange Revolution of 2004, the Maidan a decade later, and the Revolu-tion of Dignity, which has been ongoing since then, the annexation of Crimeaand the Russo-Ukrainian war in Donbas, have brought new motifs and tonesto Ukrainian art. The new generation of artists, living and working not only inUkraine but also in other countries, inexperienced directly by the trauma ofthe USSR, despite noticeable differences, look at society and the state andrecognise their multidimensionality, posing questions about their identity. – The exhibition is not a lecture on the history of Ukrainian art, nor is it merelya reconstruction of myths that are key to Ukrainian identity. It gives a uniqueinsight into the imagination of Ukrainians who, aware of their roots, boldly facethe challenges posed by the often tragic contemporaneity – viewers will readat the very beginning, visiting the exhibition.

This is the first time such a representative selection of Ukrainian art has been ondisplay in Poland. At its core are the works from the most important Ukrainiancollection – the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kiev, accompanied by theworks from other Ukrainian institutions: the National Reserve „Kiev-PecherskLavra”, the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema in Kiev, National Museum ofthe History of Ukraine in the Second World War and the National Museum „KievArt Gallery”, and from Polish collections: National Museums in Krakow, Warsawand Wroclaw, Arsenal Gallery in Białystok and the Jagiellonian Library, as wellas Polish and Ukrainian private collections.

The exhibition is complemented by film materials, photographs, posters andsculptures. An intriguing accent comes with the magnetic clothes by thefashion designer Tomasz Armada, stylistically referring to the attires wornby Cossacks and Sarmatians. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive 250-page catalogue, working as a guide to the history of Ukrainian art.

The Polish-Ukrainian dialogue has resounded in the ICC’s programming fromthe very beginning. At the conference Nations and Stereotypes, organisedin 1993, the mutual (unfortunately most often negative) perceptions of Polesand Ukrainians were discussed. Both historical and contemporary issues wereaddressed in exhibitions organised at the ICC Gallery. Exhibitions such asThe Borderlands Rediscovered. The Common Heritage of Poland and Ukraine(2005) or Lviv, 24th June 1937. City, Architecture, Modernism (2017) helpedto raise the public awareness of the importance of efforts undertaken to saveour shared heritage, while The Myth of Galicia (2014) confronted mythicalideas with historical facts. Maidan Through the Lens of Jakub Szymczuk (2016)visualised an extraordinary story about Maidan in Kiev, which was the great-est shock in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, while Ukraine. Waiting fora hero. Kostyrko, Ravski (2016) emphasised the interaction of art created infront of our eyes with current events in the country.

Ukraine. A different angle on neighbourhood will be on show from September 17, 2021 until January 16, 2022 at the ICC Gallery at Rynek Główny 25in Krakow.

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