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An Art Institution in Your Own Room: Contemporary Apartment Exhibitions in Ukraine

Exhibition at Belaruska 1, Kyiv, 05.05.2023. Photo by Ola Yeriemieieva

Today, Ukraine is witnessing a wave of self-organization: from the volunteer movement that emerged in response to Russian military aggression to artist-run spaces and apartment exhibitions. These processes date back long before the present and demonstrate alternative ways of developing society in a postcolonial state.

Before talking about institutions in Ukraine, it is important to note why they have never been properly formed. Throughout its history, Ukraine was not a subject but an object of different states: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union. With this status, there were numerous bans on the Ukrainian language, its culture was censored, and at the same time, the physical bearers of Ukrainian identity were killed and persecuted. Along with the autochthonous Ukrainian population, the indigenous Crimean Tatar people were also targeted by the Russian authorities with language bans, deportations, and genocide. Using this example, we can see how contemporary Crimean Tatar art was never formed. All the efforts of the people in exile were spent on researching and preserving traditional and folk art. Despite the oppression, people born on the territory of modern Ukraine have repeatedly entered the history of world art.

In 1922, after a short period of independence, Ukraine was occupied by the Bolsheviks and became part of the USSR. Soviet ideology, with its repression and strict framework of socialist realism, largely determined the way artistic movements, and consequently, institutions developed. Under these conditions, developing contemporary practices was not only difficult but also dangerous. But despite these difficulties, many Ukrainian artists worked underground, creating protest art for which they paid with their lives and health. We can recall the Executed Renaissance, a generation of artists from the 1920s and 1930s who were censored and repressed because of their art and political views.

Exhibition at Vladimir Asriev's apartment on 19 Bebelya Street, Odesa, 1976. Photo by Vladimir Sichov

The 1960s in Ukraine were marked by a short period of Thaw. During these years, artists had the opportunity to get in touch not only with examples of Western art but also with their own censored heritage. The decade was a long-awaited period of experimentation, but it quickly ended with the advent of the Stagnation Era. The 1970s in Kyiv were marked by a new wave of repression when, for example, the artist Alla Horska was murdered. However, it was the Thaw that gave rise to a unique trend of artistic events in self-organized art institutionsapartment exhibitions.

For Odesa, a city in the south of Ukraine, this format was a restoration and continuation of forgotten traditions. In the late 19th century, the artist Kateryna Petrokokino began organizing artistic gatherings in her apartment where artists painted, recited poetry, and held conversations. It formed due to the general lack of artistic institutions at the time. In the 1960s, the flourishing of apartment gatherings in Odesa was due not only to institutional stagnation but also to the unwillingness of the official authorities to see young artists in the few museums that existed. Unwanted in the official sphere, artists were forced to move to their private space. Therefore, between 1961 and 1985, a number of apartment exhibitions, performances, and gatherings were held in Odesa. New contemporary Ukrainian art was born at these exhibitions: a movement of non-conformism. This art was the opposite of socialist realist art, the only art that was allowed to be made at the official level. Such Odesa artists as Lyudmyla Yastreb, Valentyn Khrushch, Valery Basanets, and many others implemented Modernist ideas in their art, the development of which was stopped by Soviet censorship in the 1930s. This movement is also called the ‘Second Avant-Garde’.

Luhansk—Luhansk exhibition at depot12_59, Kyiv, 2022. Photo by Tamara Turliun

NORM exhibition, Kyiv, 2023. Photo by Andrii Boyko

With the restoration of independence in 1991, Ukraine found itself in a difficult economic and political situation. Under these conditions, the development of contemporary art institutions was slow and uneven. Also, unlike cultural centres in Western Europe, Ukrainian institutions were not funded by the state and had a fragile infrastructure. Under these conditions, the trend of apartment exhibitions transformed into what can now be called apartment galleries. These projects include, among others, the SOSka Gallery in Kharkiv (2005-2012); Detenpyla Gallery (since 2011) and Mizhkimnatnyi Prostir (since 2021) in Lviv; Apartment 14 (2016-2018), depot12_59 (since 2021), and Gallery Kruchi (since 2024) in Kyiv. These spaces gradually became small artist-run institutions that influenced the cultural landscape of the city. Apartment galleries were less dependent on Western models of art development and were closer to the context in which contemporary Ukrainian culture was created, making them highly influential venues on a level with museums and commercial galleries.

Artist Tamara Turliun, together with Andriy Lyashchuk, opened depot12_59 in 2021. The gallery is located in a residential area of Kyiv, in Darnytsia, where it remains the only artistic venue. Due to the small exhibition space and the remoteness of the gallery itself, the team hosts small, often deeply personal projects by emerging artists. With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the space initially put its activities on hold. They resumed their gallery activities after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region. The first project was the online exhibition Train 014 Luhansk – Luhansk by Anastasia Leliuk. It referred to an apartment exhibition that the artist organized back in 2017 in occupied Luhansk. Nowadays, the main vector of depot12_59 is to highlight traumatic and hidden experiences, to give a voice to artists who were forced to relocate due to the Russian invasion in 2014 or after 2022, and to implement decentralization at the city level.

Poster to "Exhibition at Belaruska 1", 05.05.2023

In January 2024, I moved to a new apartment and also started organizing apartment exhibitions, drawing sessions, and community dinners there. It became an opportunity for me to deepen my curatorial practice and realize ideas that did not fit the tone of official institutions. Looking at my apartment gallery, Kruchi, from the inside, I can identify the main elements that define this kind of gallery format. Firstly, it’s the audience that comes to the events: as in most artist-run spaces, the target audience is artists, curators, and cultural managers. This community promotes professional networking and closer interaction between individual artists. Also, the apartment format allows artists to realize a project in a more comfortable environment, without the pressure and stress that accompanies a ‘big’ institution. On the other hand, apartment exhibitions are often followed by problems of funding and archiving, as all the organizational work falls on the apartment resident.

Exhibition at Belaruska 1, Kyiv, 05.05.2023. Photo by Ola Yeriemieieva

Exhibition at Belaruska 1, Kyiv, 05.05.2023. Photo by Ola Yeriemieieva

A common feature of contemporary apartment exhibitions is the participation of the space in creating the narrative. These exhibitions are no longer just about collective shows that represent everything artists have created over a period, as it was in the 1960s. They also do not represent a risky but cherished opportunity to continue human communication, as was the case during the Covid pandemic. It is now the result of reflecting on the transformations that have occurred with space (and with us) during the full-scale war. These are also our private spaces or apartments that the Russian army wants to deprive us of. So it is natural that this space becomes the centre of the narrative.

In 2023 alone, there were at least eight apartment exhibitions held in Kyiv, organized by both artists and curators. Thickets, Groves, Woods, and Bushes by Oleksandra Pogrebnyak was an attempt to reflect on the decision to remain in one’s apartment despite the war. The works in the exhibition also contemplate the environmental impact of the Russian invasion, the lost landscape, and home. The Exhibition at Belaruska 1, organized by Ola Yeriemieieva, Zhenya Kryuk, and Oleksandr Chepelev, speaks about a personal space where artists wish to hide from the war; however, even in this naive attempt, the influence of the war is most vividly evident. NORM, curated by artists Nikita Kadan and Anton Sayenko, became an apartment response to the large-scale exhibition How Are You?, which took place at one of Kyiv’s largest institutions, the Ukrainian House. For the authors of the project, its ‘apartment-ness’ is an attempt to look each other in the eye, limiting the audience to a small group of viewers, as numerous voices, according to them, make dialogue impossible.

By offering a flexible, independent, and community-oriented approach, apartment exhibitions create a platform for artistic experimentation and social activism. Despite challenges with funding and a lack of official recognition, these galleries play an important role in democratizing art and making it accessible to marginalized groups while also providing artists with the opportunity for uncensored self-expression.

Photo by Dmytro Chepurny, 2024

Alya Segal is an art historian, independent curator and researcher, based in Kyiv, Ukraine. In her practice, she researches modern and contemporary Ukrainian art, the representation of women in it, regional movements, and underground collectives.

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