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Solo exhibition:
ID: E24.4


Title:

Demonstrative Mimicry:
7 Videos in the Basement




Date:
12 – 27 July 2024 / hours: 16:00 – 20:00

Place:
Staromiejski Dom Kultury, Warsaw, Poland

Project Coordinator:
Liza Maslionchanka

Artist:
Sergey Shabohin 
Poster


Explication:
The exhibition is a presentation of seven films by Sergey Shabohin, created between 2011 and 2023 as part of different cycles, shown together for the first time in a unified exhibition program. All the videos share the strategy of "demonstrative mimicry" – revealing hidden and repressed historical layers through "practices of subordination" to different contexts. The specificity of place and time is emphasized in each video, marking the transition of historical strata: from Soviet utopia to its collapse, from the rise of authoritarian ideology to the fixation of state stagnation, from the art activist practices of 2010 to the chronicles of the protest movement of 2020, from the smoke of war and geopolitical upheavals to the redistribution of the world. The choice of the basement for the exhibition is deliberate, serving as an art-terrorist underground, a den or lair, a mine or a warehouse of historical palimpsests and total archives, as well as a shelter-refuge from external catastrophes. The videos not only demonstrate how empires are born and fall apart and how they displace any subject, but also how solidarity, imagination, and the pursuit of freedom have powerful emancipatory potential.

The exhibition was held as part of a residency at SDK.

Organizer:
SDK

With the participation of the SDK team:
Kaja Werbanowska, Kinga Cieplińska, Marcin Jasiński

Link: