Curators:
Lizaveta German
Curator, researcher of coaching history and art exhibitions of international and Ukrainian art scene and art of Ukrainian sixtiers. She writes about contemporary art for Ukrainian media, including publications of “Ukrainian Truth” and “Corridor”. Co-founder of research media resource “Open Archive» (openarchive.com.ua).
Maria Lanko
Researcher, curator. In 2014, graduated from the program “Curatorial Platform” in PinchukArtCentre. Final exhibition curator of the First Kiev residence for artists KyivAIR – 2013 at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. She writes about contemporary art for Ukrainian media, including publications “Ukrainian Truth” and “Corridor”. Co-founder of the “Open Archive» research media resource (openarchive.com.ua).
The “Region in Focus” project united the artists for whom Donbas for many years was and stays the subject of comprehensive visual research, revealed in photo series (often extended). In the focus of their projects are different dimensions of Donbas history of the last two decades, from the collapse of heroic miner image on the background of industry decline and the loss of social profession prestige to understanding of extremely dangerous, often illegal labor as the only existing basis of life during the war.
Program events :
- Sasha Kurmaz’s exhibition “My world is not real enough for apocalypse“. This photo project was created during the organized by the fund “Isolation” residence for young artists in Donetsk and deducated to the life of young people in the conditions of industrial metropolis.
- Victor Marushchenko exhibition “Donbas is a Dreamland”. The project was created in 2002 – 2003 during the visits of illegal mines of the Eastern region in preparation for a documentary film directed by famous Austrian Michael Glawogger. The central theme of the project is demythologization of miner image, as it emerged in the era of Soviet industrial expansion.
- “Labour in the firing line and workers’ social isolation”. Talk with the artist Eugenia Belorusets and human rights activist Vira Yastryebova dedicated to value of self organisation of Donbas miners on virtually abandoned enterprises in a combat zone, and the role of miners’ labor movement in the current political process in Ukraine as a whole. Since 2014 Eugenia Belorusets spends much time in the area of ATO, talks to the locals, films and writes to the media about the situation in the region.
- «Youth Subcultures in the conditions of industrial metropolis“. Discussion with the artists Sasha Kurmaz and KinderAlbum. During a month’s staying in Donetsk, Kurmaz had meetigs with local communities, plunging the private world of their everyday affairs and entertainments, parties and specific subcultural leisure, in short, everything that forms the picture of the world of every young person regardless of the geography of residence.
- «Gender Studies in the Country of Dreams”. Talk with the photographer Victor Maruschenko and art critic and philosopher Tamara Zlobina. If the focus of Maruschenko, it often to be a woman as an pits employee together with the male laborers and as coquettish model, trying to regain apparent femininity by act of posing for photography.
