In the presence of the artists Alex Blanco, Yana Kononova and Daria Svertilova
Exhibition produced as part of of the support program for Ukraine piloted by the Diagonal network with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the French Institute
With the support of the DRAC Grand Est, the Grand Est Region, the City and Eurometropolis of Strasbourg
With the support by Odesa Photo Days
in collaboration with The Carré d'Art, Pôle Sud Cultural Center (Chartres-de-Bretagne) and the Claude Cahun Center (Nantes)
Alex Blanco, Maxim Dondyuk, Yana Kononova, Olga Kukush, Oksana Nevmerzhytska, Elena Subach, Daria Svertilova.
The artists tell of the paper parrots hung by the young people on the walls of the collective habitats of kyiv. They also tell about pregnancy and the loneliness of women. Hospitals that could melt like sugar Jesuses. The recipe for eggplant caviar in Odessa. Garlic, pepper, some peppers. The meteorite that the inhabitants await, crucifix in hand, in Chervonohrad. Naked bodies – so long forbidden. They tell the night, the sea and finally the snow which will soon be covered by the poetry of Lao Tseu.
For several weeks, questions have been bothering us. What can we show of Ukrainian creation today? How do the artists view their previous series? How do these works resonate in a country at war? These questions were asked to the artists and accompany an exhibition of photographs taken before February 2022.
Odesa Photo Days is an international festival of contemporary photography based in Ukraine as well as an educational platform. It brings Ukrainian photography to the forefront and creates links between artists, curators and researchers from different parts of the world: Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Central Asia, Northeast Asia, -United.
The eighth edition of the festival was scheduled to take place in Odesa from May 19 to 22, 2022. Russia's military invasion of Ukraine, however, changed everything. On February 24, 2022, an all-out war began in Ukraine. From now on, Kateryna Radchenko, director and curator of Odesa Photo Days and the festival team are working to relay the situation in Ukraine throughout the world and to support documentary photographers and artist-photographers affected by the war.
Exhibition presented at Stimultania, Strasbourg, from May 13 to September 17, 2022, at Carré d'Art, Center culturel Pôle Sud, Chartres-de-Bretagne, from January 20 to March 4, 2023, and at Center Claude Cahun, Nantes, from May to June 2023.
