Group exhibition and curatorial project:
ID: E15.3
Title:
ZBOR. Constructing an Archive
Date:
August 28 — October 7, 2015
Place:
Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland
Curators:
Sergey Shabohin, Sergey Kiryuschenko
Artists:
Siarhiej Babareka, Israel Basov, Belarusian Climate group, Bergamot group, Vladimir Tsesler / Sergey Voichenko, Anna Chkolnikova, Lena Davidovich, Evelina Domnich / Dmitry Gelfand, Andrei Dureika, Zhanna Gladko, Janna Grak, Oxana Gourinovitch, Mikhail Gulin, Sergey Kiryuschenko, Artur Klinov, Alexander Komarov, Alexej Koschkarow, Andrei Liankevich, Lipovy Cvetgroup, Alexey Lunev, Vika Mitrichenko, Galina Moskaleva / Vladimir Shakhlevich, Marina Naprushkina, Ales Pushkin, group Revision, Vitaly Rozhkov (Bismark), Ludmila Rusova, Igor Savchenko, Olga Sazykina, Sergey Shabohin, Antonina Slobodchikova, Anna Sokolova, Tamara Sokolova, Leon Tarasewicz, Oleg Tcherny, Igor Tishin, Maxim Tyminko / Gleb Choutov / Maja Ilic, Vasiliy Vasiliev, Alexey Velikjanin, Oleg Yushko / Kirill Lubenec
Experts’ group:
Tania Arcimović, Aleksei Borisionok, Andrei Dureikа, Valentina Kiseleva, Alexey Lunev, Lena Prents
Exhibition coordinator:
Pavel Preobrazhensky
Authors of the texts:
Andrei Dureika, Maxim Tyminko, Sergey Shabohin
Co-authors:
Tania Arcimović, Tatiana Bembel, Aleksei Borisionok, Anton Borisenka, Olga Bubich, Lyudmila Voropai, Paulina Vitushchanka, Irina Herasimovich, Aliona Gluhova, Natallia Harachaya, Ilona Dergach, Vadim Dobrovolsкy, Andrei Dureika, Tatyana Kondratenko, Larisa Mikhnevich, Lena Prents, Olga Ryibchinskaya, Anna Samarskaya, Alexander Sarna, Sasha Semak, Tanya Setsko, Anna Sokolova, Irina Solomatina, Olga Sosnovskaya, Kristina Stashkevich, Svetlana Ulanovskaya, Larisa Filkinshtein, Olga Shparaga, Vitaly Schutsky, Oleg Yushko
Works:
Video Art Terrorism;
documentation of the total installation Art Terrorism (From Partisans to Activism)
documentation of the total installation Art Terrorism (From Partisans to Activism)
Sergey Shabohin:
video Art Terrorism,
2015
video Art Terrorism,
2015
Explication:
Exhibition of Belarusian art within the framework of The East of Culture / Another Dimension Festival.
The exhibition entitled “COLLECTION (ZBOR). Constructing an archive” documents the forty most essential artistic statements in the contemporary art of Belarus in the years 1991–2015. It could be organized and exhibited owing to materials collected by the KALEKTAR Belarusian contemporary art research platform (kalektar.org) for the special project ZBOR (zbor.kalektar.org) established by the platform. ZBOR is an online constantly expanded and updated information resource pertaining to the oeuvres of the leading Belarusian artists from the 1980s until the present day. The data resource is intended to function as a universal base for further, more detailed research in this area. The exhibition has been conceived as a special, widely available handbook of Belarusian art of the recent decades. Its creators are firmly hoping that debates accompanying its presentation will further the reflection concerning the significance of art, art protection procedures, and the process of developing an art collection. As a result, they wish to develop a project that is unique in Eastern Europe: a detailed, professional information resource pertaining to the most essential artistic statements recently presented by Belarusian artists. Being one of the key Polish cultural institutions programmatically interested in the contemporary art of Belarus, the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok has been proposed to host the exhibition.
The cultural policy of contemporary Belarus is centralised; it is controlled and financed by the state. The art research, criticism, collecting and museum management depend almost entirely on state funding and follow the established ideological programme. Currently, Belarus has five large state-owned collections concerned with the country’s contemporary art. These collections are chaotic and propagandist, however; in addition, due to the ruling ideology and the preferences of their managers, many noteworthy figures, phenomena and works are ignored. Consequently, Belarus does not have a single professionally created, constantly available public collection that would be representative of all the currents in the country’s most recent art, and information regarding essential tendencies and phenomena is vanishing.
In the recent decades, Belarusian art has been undergoing various transformations. These years witnessed many important actions by artists and art formations, which materially influenced the development of culture. So far, however, diverse circles of professionals concerned with art criticism have not developed an integrated appraisal of those phenomena, which resulted in the marginalisation and disappearance of data pertaining to contemporary art created in the recent decades. Initiatives undertaken by both independent and state researchers do not coalesce into a coherent, consistent programme. As a result, the ensuing scholarship is random and incidental, and a picture of Belarusian contemporary art that would be full, objective and firmly based on scholarly methodology has still not been obtained. In addition, the cases of reciprocal influences between the Belarusian and foreign contemporary art, and their impact on the oeuvres of Belarusian artists, have hitherto not been recognised or researched.
Firstly, state collections in Belarus contain virtually no art that would be independent, not bowing to the official ideological programme; secondly, views critical of the state policy and officially supported culture get entirely ignored. In stark contrast to other countries, there are no educational programmes, catalogues or collections that would take note of the key events, figures, works and tendencies in Belarusian art. State-sponsored research on works of art encompass the period ending in the mid-1990s, and this is also reflected in school education programmes. Artistic phenomena dating from the mid-1990s until today are thus excluded from state research; this practically forces independent scholars to focus at the art of this period. Yet the absence of a shared research programme and the independent experts’ varying degree of professional training results in an irretrievable loss of data. It is true that vigorous processes of consolidating the Belarusian artistic milieu and supplementing the research resources have been observed of late, and the necessity of establishing an alternative, non-state museum of contemporary art is noted; yet no significant steps towards creating a social information-and-research base dedicated to Belarusian art of the recent decades have been undertaken.
The exhibition entitled “COLLECTION (ZBOR). Constructing an archive” documents the forty most essential artistic statements in the contemporary art of Belarus in the years 1991–2015. It could be organized and exhibited owing to materials collected by the KALEKTAR Belarusian contemporary art research platform (kalektar.org) for the special project ZBOR (zbor.kalektar.org) established by the platform. ZBOR is an online constantly expanded and updated information resource pertaining to the oeuvres of the leading Belarusian artists from the 1980s until the present day. The data resource is intended to function as a universal base for further, more detailed research in this area. The exhibition has been conceived as a special, widely available handbook of Belarusian art of the recent decades. Its creators are firmly hoping that debates accompanying its presentation will further the reflection concerning the significance of art, art protection procedures, and the process of developing an art collection. As a result, they wish to develop a project that is unique in Eastern Europe: a detailed, professional information resource pertaining to the most essential artistic statements recently presented by Belarusian artists. Being one of the key Polish cultural institutions programmatically interested in the contemporary art of Belarus, the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok has been proposed to host the exhibition.
The cultural policy of contemporary Belarus is centralised; it is controlled and financed by the state. The art research, criticism, collecting and museum management depend almost entirely on state funding and follow the established ideological programme. Currently, Belarus has five large state-owned collections concerned with the country’s contemporary art. These collections are chaotic and propagandist, however; in addition, due to the ruling ideology and the preferences of their managers, many noteworthy figures, phenomena and works are ignored. Consequently, Belarus does not have a single professionally created, constantly available public collection that would be representative of all the currents in the country’s most recent art, and information regarding essential tendencies and phenomena is vanishing.
In the recent decades, Belarusian art has been undergoing various transformations. These years witnessed many important actions by artists and art formations, which materially influenced the development of culture. So far, however, diverse circles of professionals concerned with art criticism have not developed an integrated appraisal of those phenomena, which resulted in the marginalisation and disappearance of data pertaining to contemporary art created in the recent decades. Initiatives undertaken by both independent and state researchers do not coalesce into a coherent, consistent programme. As a result, the ensuing scholarship is random and incidental, and a picture of Belarusian contemporary art that would be full, objective and firmly based on scholarly methodology has still not been obtained. In addition, the cases of reciprocal influences between the Belarusian and foreign contemporary art, and their impact on the oeuvres of Belarusian artists, have hitherto not been recognised or researched.
Firstly, state collections in Belarus contain virtually no art that would be independent, not bowing to the official ideological programme; secondly, views critical of the state policy and officially supported culture get entirely ignored. In stark contrast to other countries, there are no educational programmes, catalogues or collections that would take note of the key events, figures, works and tendencies in Belarusian art. State-sponsored research on works of art encompass the period ending in the mid-1990s, and this is also reflected in school education programmes. Artistic phenomena dating from the mid-1990s until today are thus excluded from state research; this practically forces independent scholars to focus at the art of this period. Yet the absence of a shared research programme and the independent experts’ varying degree of professional training results in an irretrievable loss of data. It is true that vigorous processes of consolidating the Belarusian artistic milieu and supplementing the research resources have been observed of late, and the necessity of establishing an alternative, non-state museum of contemporary art is noted; yet no significant steps towards creating a social information-and-research base dedicated to Belarusian art of the recent decades have been undertaken.
Organizers:
KALEKTAR research platform of Belarusian contemporary art and Arsenal Gallery
Link: