THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST
Because of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok is organizing an exhibition titled “The Journey to the East” . Poland, along with Sweden, is the initiator of Eastern Partnership project, therefore we invite artists from countries participating in it - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine – as well as artists from Poland.
We do not want to group the works in nationality pigeonholes; however, at the same time we do not pretend that the issues of ethnicity and nationality are invisible. Young political systems and post-communist heritage still influence art in many countries. Artistic activity is connected not only to artist’s personal resources - artistic schools, institutions supporting the artists’ work and the existence of artistic circles and presence of art critics and curators play an important role as well. These are important issues, which were presented to us in virtually every country we visited. And finally, artists make statements concerning only the topics pertaining to them and their lives
Edwin Bendyk prophesizes, that the solution to various global problems is the creation of interpersonal relations based on love, not competition, hierarchy or domination. We are interested in love, which transgresses the notion of relation between two people. We seek positive emotions, which create bonds between people all over the world – bonds that are an alternative to government authority and economic capital.
We want to ask the artists what role they think these emotions play in post-communist society and whether building new social capital on interpersonal relations is a utopia or perhaps it can be realized.
We see our project as an open situation, creating various modes of participation and interpretation – from watching and listening to discussion, active participation and writing. We will gather objects, organize meetings, discussions, lectures, workshops, performances and installations in public space.
The artists we invited are:
Vahram Aghasyan
Rashad Alakbarov
Ruben Arevshatyan
Babi Badalov
Samvel Baghdasaryan
Alicja Bielawska
Anatoly Belov
Bouillon Group
CHINGIZ
Anna Chkolnikova
Lado Darakhvelidze
Kuba Dąbrowski
Veaceslav Druta
Tatiana Fiodorova
Arman Grigoryan
Nicolas Grospierre
Armine Hovhannisyan
Orkhan Huseynov
Elżbieta Jabłońska
Dominik Jałowiński
Alevtina Kakhidze
Yaroslava-Maria Khomenko
Tigran Khachatryan
Aleksander Komarov
Maxim Kuzmenko
Volodymyr Kuznetsov
Anna Molska
Marina Naprushkina
Dumitru Oboroc
Joanna Rajkowska
Stefan Rusu
Elene Rakviashvili
Nino Sekhniashvili
Sergey Shabohin
Sabina Shikhlinskaya
Jakub Szczęsny
Sophia Tabatadze
TanzLaboratorium
Stas Volyazlovsky
Oleg Yushko
Project concept: Anna Lazar, Monika Szewczyk
Curator: Monika Szewczyk
Contributing curators: Anna Łazar, Marianna Hovhannisyan, Magda Guruli, Lena Prents and Stefan Rusu
Exhibition design:
Robert Rumas
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