Heartbeat

A joint exhibition (by artists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia)

Vernissage: Fri, 02 June 2023 on 7pm
Exhibition duration: 04 June to 16 August 2023

“We as artists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are participating in this exhibition. Yes, we are performing together. We all go through pain and anger. But we do not accept hatred between the artists of our countries. Hate is what the regime that started the war wants. If we start hating each other, they will have won. They will not win.”

Heartbeat is an exhibition of contemporary art jointly developed by artists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Many of the artworks will be created especially for the exhibition. On display will be paintings, sculptures, videos and works on paper. The dismay the artists feel as people from the countries directly affected by the war was the motivation for this exhibition project.

Artists

Tania Sklyar (Odessa/Berlin)

Julia Katan (Odessa/Berlin)

Katya Tishkevich (Minsk)

Masha Garash (Minsk)

Liudmila Belova (St. Petersburg/Rose, Montenegro)

Marina Koldobskaya (St. Petersburg/Berlin)

The works on display represent an immediate direct personal experience of human suffering and passions, which in one way or another are linked to the tragedy of their countries.

Katya Tishkevich’s graphic and sculptural works literally bring to life the physical pain, trauma and horror of the destruction of the human being.

Marina Koldobskaya’s brutal primitivist painting shows a blind, animalistic, frenzied aggression that takes everything and everyone with it.

Liudmila Belova’s video focuses on the harrowing, endless anticipation of the unknown (spellbinding) catastrophe. The catastrophe itself remains a restrained theme, but in the artist’s graphic works one can see the sad image of the “landscape after the battle”.

Tania Sklyar’s objects symbolically show the pathological damage to the collective body of humanity, the collapse of consciousness leading to the destruction of life itself.

The surrealist works of Julia Katan, based on the Ukrainian folklore tradition, point to the dark, unreasonable forces that control the events of our lives.

Masha Garash’s mystical videos are about the violation of the “moral law within us”, without which there is no way to the “starry sky above us”.

Responsibility without morality, punishment without crime, guilt without blame and sorrow without end – this is what the artists experience.

Artwork (detail): Marina Koldobskaya