Video Team Kiev

Together with the Ukrainian video artists Uli Golub and Yurij Kruchak, the 10 young exhibition ambassadors from Kiev are developing an extraordinary project: After examining the art of Barlach + Kollwitz on their relevance to the presence and current situation in Ukraine and recording video sequences on 24 and 25 February in the exhibition in NAMU, they go on a three-day working trip to Kharkiv. Most of them have left Kiev for the first time to the east coming close to the sad war region. They follow the footsteps of Ernst Barlach, who in 1906 traveled from Kiev to Kharkiv and the surrounding areas to his brother, who worked as an engineer there. Kharkiv was the industrial center of Russia at that time. Today, Kharkiv is one of the post-industrial regions of the world suffering severe social and economic changes due to the withdrawal of heavy industry and mining. In addition, the city is dominated by the war, which takes place in the immediate vicinity. So what changed in the years between 1906 and today? Has the progress, which everyone believed in at that time, paid off for the people? Do we live today in a world that Barlach and Kollwitz dreamed of back then, marked by peace, social justice and a balance between man and nature?


How far we are from this, the exhibition ambassadors show in their video contributions. Their Face Art-Face Future exhibition at the Bursa Gallery Kiev from 2 to 4 March 2018 presents in 12 video installations the creative rebellion of young people against a reality in which human rights to a peaceful and happy life are not responded.



During the three exhibition days, Bursa Gallery Kiev counts 728 mostly young visitors!


Exhibition Ambassadors Video Team: Anna Bidnenko, Yaroslava Velychko, Roman Hardashuk, Marina Husak, Evgeniia Nahnybida, Inna Oleksiienko, Daria Paliyenko, Oleksandra Tumyk, Maksym Khodak.

Performance Team Kiev

Together with the theater trainer and actress Anna Aleksandrowitsch-Saminina and the art mediator Olga Balashova, the performance team works for five days in the exhibition in NAMU Kiev. The 12 young exhibition ambassadors work on giving a voice of the present to the figures and images of Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz, connecting them with their personal questions and observations to develop a touching presentation concept. Their goal is to let the artworks become perceptible in an emotional context and to guide the visitors into an active process of confrontation. How do the images of war, poverty, hope and despair affect us today? What do they have to do with our reality? The visitors become part in this action and experience a dramatic staging that gets under your skin!


Their performance has been presented for the first time to the public on 2 March 2018 at the opening of Face Art-Face Future Video Exhibition in Bursa Gallery Kiev. Further presentations followed on the upcoming Sundays at the NAMU inside Barlach-Kollwitz exhibition: A total of 232 visitors from all generations took part in the FA-FF program of the Performance Group.


Exhibition Ambassadors Performance Team: Svitlana Vedeneeva, Kseniia Yehorova, Iryna Zhaloba, Uliana Kalush, Yelyzaveta Klymets, Bogdan Koverznev, Sviatoslav Koverznev, Hryhorii Kondratenko, Mariia Lukianchuk, Yuliia Pavlova.