We publish an article by Maryna Shcherbenko, prepared especially for the “MUHi 2009-2021” book.

MUHi 2009-2021

In my eyes, the new generation of artists had begun their practices, gained new experience, attempted to push the traditional boundaries of Ukrainian contemporary art, and outlined new trends and thematic diversity. Young Ukrainian artists had become visible, and their statements were already, and continue to be, ever more convincing. It was impossible for me to stand aside as a gallery owner and curator. I wanted to find, understand, and support this generation in order to help it move beyond the traditional practices and mediums imposed by the Ukrainian academic art education system. To give it a chance to be heard and seen. To encourage them to overcome existing and imposed stereotypes, and assist in the realization of the self in a professional artistic environment. It is only natural that, against the backdrop of these desires, my actions and those of my team were directed towards creating a multifunctional project such as MUHi, — something which by now we have already been developing, supplementing and expanding since 2009.

The book MUHi 2009–2021 will help us see how daily and often monotonous work in the environment of contemporary art produces great and meaningful results, how bright talents emerge, grow strong, and sometimes die. Those who remain are gradually gaining the courage to express themselves, discovering more and more opportunities and tools to make themselves heard, attempting to expand the boundaries of cooperation with society, and frequently dealing with complex, conflicting, and provocative issues.

A new discourse is being formed within the MUHi project thanks to the cooperation of artists, curators, critics, and experts, as well as visitors. In this book, we have attempted to record it, at least to some extent. Furthermore, we have been able to note the current trends that formed during the work of MUHi from 2009 to 2021, which may not have been obvious due to the main emphases and goals of our project, but which were nonetheless being established as a result of our work. These are, first and foremost, the decentralization of Ukrainian art, followed by the problematization of a young artist’s status, the reaction of young artists to current socio-political events — including escapism, the actualization of the issue of self-identification, focuses on local stories, working with trauma, elaboration of the past and forming traces of memory, as well as violations of canons in various fields, the rivalry between traditional and new media, and so on. As a result, we have compiled an archive of our collaborative work with young Ukrainian artists in the MUHi project, reflecting some of the changes in young art that have occurred during this time period.

We also publish these materials in order to answer the following questions: how did the pace of socioeconomic and technological development influence the formation of young artists’ creative practices? How did Ukraine’s political changes and upheavals affect young people? How did it come to pass that a small exhibition could grow into a large business with an impact generally on the formation of a professional artistic environment? Can art make way for change and cause qualitative shifts in public life? And how does the new generation of artists utilize such tools in their work?

From the very beginning of MUHi, there was an initiative to work on qualitative changes in contemporary Ukrainian young art, but only afterwards did the understanding emerge that it should be professionally developed and supported, and, today, that it should consciously make use of the experience gained. The book MUHi 2009–2021 is another significant step in our daily work. It is also a gesture in favour of all those involved in art in Ukraine today, who not only believe in changes but also make them. You are holding in your hands materials for further discussions, actions, analysis, conclusions, and ideas. I hope that this will provide us with additional motivation to support one another,  in order to further guide the permeation of Ukrainian art in all spheres of society, and improve its quality.

 

 

In 2009, I was managing the work of Bottega Gallery in Kyiv, which I had founded and opened only a year prior. Exhibitions of paintings by prominent Ukrainian artists of that time were on rotation one after another. But then, a new generation of artists practically broke into a relatively stable and moderate rhythm of my gallery activity. They demanded attention, were persistent and convincing, showed up unannounced, offered a greeting from the threshold, introduced themselves and showed their work. From these works I formed the first group exhibition of young Ukrainian artists, using the acronym for those words as a title — MUHi (Molodi Ukrayinsʹki Hudozhnyky ta Hudozhnytsi i).

Back then, it was difficult to imagine that this would be the beginning of a large-scale project that would become a platform for opportunities for so many artists. And today we can see the results of that difficult, albeit exciting, collaborative work. During this time, we organized numerous personal and group exhibitions, held countless meetings, developed educational programs, prepared and published interviews and various articles, collected retrospectives, visited residences, and on and on! Participants of MUHi now collaborate with the most important and influential Ukrainian institutions because their works are relevant and performed at a high level. They acquire education abroad, participate in international residencies, exhibit their work in international projects, all of which actively integrate Ukraine into the global community. And behind most of these movements is our institutional support. As a result of all this, the teams of Shcherbenko Art Centre and MUHi now have a massive amount of data that can be used to analyze events, changes, and trends in young Ukrainian art throughout the competition.

In the early years of MUHi, my main goal was to establish and organize the gallery’s collaboration with young artists. At that time, in the Ukrainian cultural discourse, support for the younger generation was not as relevant as it is today, although art institutions were already beginning to look for ways to introduce new names in the field of contemporary Ukrainian art. It was a time when the new generation was becoming more visible and influential. Back in 2004, against the backdrop of the Orange Revolution, the group R.E.P. was formed in Kyiv, and in 2005 the group SOSka appeared in Kharkiv. It was crucial for these artists to dedicate their works to sociopolitical criticism. According to Alisa Lozhkina’s book, The Permanent Revolution, they “sought to conform to the Western intellectual climate and took a leftist position, showing an interest in non-spectacular practices and institutional criticism”1.

As a result, a healthy interest in Ukrainian artists of the younger generation began to emerge, from curators, project coordinators, dealers and collectors in Ukraine and abroad. Everyone was looking for bright representatives according to their request. Tiberiy Szilvashi stated the following in an interview with Nastia Kalyta on the online magazine Your Art: “This generation is the least justified in being ‘offended’. In their 30s, their CVs look more solid than those of previous generations did at  40 or 50. They are coddled by institutions, the market is not the primary space for them — and the product they provide; but in a different, unique form, which is natural for a generation that thinks in terms of processes rather than finished works.”2 This is how new Ukrainian art is created — with the help of new tools that will pique the audience’s interest (after all, without interaction with viewers, and in particular with potential buyers, an art product loses its primary purpose). Despite the significant expansion of opportunities to implement projects, artists face new challenges, one of which is the need to fit into the current discourse, which frequently contradicts market trends. This is especially true for our local environment. Market demand is still dominated by conservative tastes in academic practices, which has an impact on the career development of young artists in one way or another. Some are more amenable to the demands of the market and abandon their creative search, stamping out the repetitive works that are more understandable to potential clients; and some even change their career path entirely.

A developed network of cultural art awards, competitions, and residencies enables young artists to receive funds for specialized education, practice development, networking, and international cultural exchange. Participating in reputable projects has a significant impact on their career development, as evidenced by countless examples. Ukraine began to form an institutional network, competitions, awards, residencies, and so on, only a few years after gaining independence. Nowadays, these represent a solid bit of work: the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award3, the PinchukArtCentre Prize4 and the MUHi competition itself.

Jerzy Onuch, the founder of the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award, stated: “From a 12-year perspective, we can assume that the artists who received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award or were nominated, will simply create a canon of new Ukrainian art. A canon that will undoubtedly be tested over time, but for that you must have something on which to rely.”5 This applies to all young artists who have been nominated for the Malevich Prize, as well as the PinchukArtCentre and MUHi Awards. The consistent and continuous work of these three institutions has provided a diverse, but also new and expressive part of the generation of artists who are today the main representatives of contemporary Ukrainian art.

In the book MUHi 2009–2021, I want to draw attention to the main processes of the institution’s formation and functioning, as well as allow readers to trace the consequences and results of the competition team’s ongoing work. The MUHi project has changed every year. These progressions stimulated its development and provided new tools for influencing various processes in young contemporary Ukrainian art. For the first time, in 2010, I invited a team of experts to select and evaluate the works of participants; the committee included experienced and active members of the Ukrainian cultural scene. The work of the expert committee allowed us to more objectively select artists for the MUHi shortlist competition. This was the beginning of the formation of a new project, relatively independent from Bottega Gallery, and, later, from Shcherbenko Art Centre.

During the first competition in 2010, we had already earned the trust of the community and artists with tremendous potential and undeniable talent were the first to submit their portfolios. Who are they? What is the divergence of this generation? The representatives of this generation came to the art scene with a number of important topical issues: identity, stereotypical perception in society, gender issues, feminist discourse, illusory of political systems and ideologies, and many more.

Many participants were exhibiting their works for the first time, and after the competition, we collaborated with the majority of them to organize their first personal exhibitions. The competition exposed many of the issues that this tool conceals when working with young artists, but it also revealed many benefits. Year after year, we implemented new rules and introduced new changes to improve the competition’s work.

Thanks to our openness to criticism and flexibility in responding to societal changes, we have at present acquired a full-fledged and stable institution in MUHi. In recent years, we have obtained a quality result — many alumni of the program already have their personal brand, to the degree that they have been invited to join the MUHi expert committee, (Maria Kulikovska and Apl 315 in 2019), and been exhibited in various retrospectives (Daniil Galkin 2017, Maria Kulikovska 2020, at Shcherbenko Art Centre).

Let us consider the example of our systematic work with one of the MUHi 2010 nominees. Back then Maria Kulikovska exhibited her sculpture My Second Xena. This was her first appearance in an artistic environment. Even then, she declared herself as a representative of feminist discourse (which was just emerging in Ukraine), whereupon she began to actively implement projects in Ukraine and many European countries. We systematically collaborated on projects and some Maria’s performances in the Centre. In 2020, I curated a mini-retrospective From Action to Performative Sculpture by Maria Kulikovska at Shcherbenko Art Centre. And in 2021 the Centre submitted her project to the competition of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine for the presentation of the Ukrainian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, with which we were shortlisted. We should not stop there.

A new rule was implemented in 2011: an artist can only participate in the competition once. As a result, each year we get a new list of participants with comparable qualifications and relevant experience. The practice of holding MUHi reveals a persistent contradiction in the motivation of participants: it is important to get on the shortlist for them and participate in a competitive exhibition, as this step is a good opportunity and a chance to be noticed in the professional field. But also the competition’s incentive works as well; each participant wants to win, receive a prize, and have the opportunity to create an exhibition in Shcherbenko Art Centre.

The shortlist of MUHi 2012 had the largest number of participants — 28. Apparently, the experts wanted to give more artists a chance to demonstrate their abilities, but this had a negative impact on the quality of the work and the formation of the exhibition. The exhibition space was crammed with works, and it was difficult to tell where one project ended and another began. Nevertheless, a number of works by participants became significant in the development of young Ukrainian art.

Let us focus on some of them. Alina Kleytman’s work Doomsday  (2012) is a notebook created by the artist and on the final pages of which it is written ‘Winner!!!’. This project simply and straightforwardly demonstrated the artist’s attitude to the competition as a competition imposed by institutions in an artistic environment where competition should not be a priority. Criticism of competitions is still prevalent among the professional public today, and back then a wave of dissatisfaction with the system swept through all contemporary art institutions. Also in 2012, for example, an extraordinary reaction to this was expressed in the appearance of the Malevich Prize winner, Zhanna Kadyrova, together with two members of R.E.P. Group, Lesia Khomenko and Lada Nakonechna. The artists were dressed in the same athletic suits. In this way, they drew a parallel between art competitions and sports competitions.

Pavlo Kovach’s Balance project, Yevhen Samborsky’s Velvet Nothing installation and Yuriy Biley’s Silence performance, exhibited as part of MUHi 2012, as well as Between Us, a joint project by Open Group and Wax, Pavlo Kovach’s personal exhibition, both at Bottega Gallery in 2012, outlined the formation of consistent work by the members of Open Group (both together and separately) as bright representatives of modern conceptualism.

In 2013, I was invited to be the curator of the Ukraine Today project at the Czech Center in Prague, where I had complete freedom of choice. It was crucial for me to demonstrate to our Czech colleagues what was happening in young Ukrainian art. The project was then noticed by Lenka Lindaurova, the competition manager for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. She invited me to join their competition’s expert committee, where I worked for three years. It was a wonderful intercultural exchange experience that helped me navigate the formation of the competition. During this time, I reorganized MUHi several times, focusing on our local demand and the quirks of the art community.

The competition drew the attention of the business community in 2015, and we were able to cover the costs of participation for artists travelling to Kyiv from various parts of Ukraine, as well as being able to partially finance the production of works. However, each competition year presents a new challenge for me, because there is a great desire to improve the level of the project, and it should so, however, limited financial resources are the main impediment in this regard.

Every year, I work with the MUHi competition nominees, I select and approve their works for the exhibition. And in my coordinating work, certain priorities have been formed: to preserve the autonomy of the artist in his or her artistic expression; to create the necessary platform for dialogue with the audience; and, under no circumstances to trivialize the work by adapting it to certain tastes. These projects have developed their own audience of connoisseurs of contemporary Ukrainian art, which is growing and changing as we do.

The work of artists who have joined our project in recent years is markedly different from that of their predecessors in terms of style, medium, and theme. One of the most influential curators of the modern art world, Hans Ulrich Obrist, in his book Ways of Curating noted: “a new generation of younger individuals is beginning to contribute to contemporary art and culture. Born in the age of digitization, this group… shares an irreverence for traditional notions of authorship and cultural heritage, something that is manifested in their work. They have instant knowledge and technological know-how at their fingertips, and they rely on digital social platforms to showcase their new ideas and culturally iconoclastic approaches.”6. The works of the 2015, 2017, and 2019 MUHi nominees reflect our post-Soviet reality. Their reactions to and reevaluation of current events are processed through modern mediums. Socio-critical projects are frequently repulsive and provocative, as they deal with complex issues that you want to avoid. They are frequently difficult to reflect on.

In 2019 and 2021, the NGO Shcherbenko Art Centre gained grant support from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. It is important for me not only as a financial investment in our project; I see it as recognition of the institutional and personal contribution to the development of Ukrainian contemporary young art at the state level.

We prepared this book during the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic. This is a difficult period of unexpected changes and challenges, disruption of the usual work rhythm due to a number of unrealized projects, cancelled deadlines, postponed dates, missed opportunities, and so on. Our priorities, however, remain constant: we consistently and continuously support young Ukrainian artists. Together with them we create art that changes culture and society for the better.

Maryna Shcherbenko
Curator, collector, founder and director of Shcherbenko Art Centre and the MUHi competition

NOTES:

[some article titles have been translated to English from their original language]

[1] Lozhkina, Alisa. Permanent revolution. Art of Ukraine of the XX — beginning of the XXI century / Перманентна революція. Мистецтво України ХХ — початку ХХІ століття Alice Lozhkina // Kyiv: ArtHuss, 2019. — 544 p.

[2] Kalyta, Nastia. Tiberiy Szilvashi “This generation is the least justified in being ‘offended’”/“Менш за все молоде покоління схоже на “скривджених”. [Electronic resource] / Nastia Kalyta // Your Art. — 2019. — URL: https://supportyourart.com/conversations/silvashi/

[3] The Kazimir Malevich Artist Award was established in 2008 by the Polish Institute in Kyiv to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Suprematism’s founder. It is awarded every two years to Ukrainian artists under the age of 40 who have made a personal contribution to the development of contemporary art. The award is given to artists who have already made a name for themselves professionally, rather than to those who are just starting out. Cultural institutions nominate candidates. The jury, which rotates each year, consists of both Ukrainian and foreign experts.

[4] The PinchukArtCentre Award is a national award in the field of contemporary art, given to Ukrainian artists under the age of 35 every two years since 2009. Thanks to the Award, the art center constantly increases its interest in contemporary art in Ukraine and supports the creation of new works and forms a community of young artists who will work on the national and international art scene. URL: https://prize.pinchukartcentre.org/ua/about

[5] Onuch, Jerzy. Malevich/Малевич [Electronic resource] / Jerzy Onuch // Week.ua. — 2020. — URL: https://m.tyzhden.ua/column/250870

 

[6] Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Ways of Curating / Hans Ulrich Obrist with Asad Reza, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2014  169 p. Originally quoted in Ukrainian by the author from the Russian edition; Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Ways of Curating /Пути кураторства / Hans Ulrich Obrist // Ad Marginem Press, 2014. — 154 p.