Saved from war: A Ukrainian curator from an art gallery in kyiv told New York on Wednesday of her journey through Eastern Europe to shelter and exhibit at the upcoming Venice Biennale the contemporary work by an artist from his country.
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Artists and the war in Ukraine
Hosted in Manhattan by Jim Kempner's art gallery, an American of Ukrainian origin, Maria Lanko, who runs The Naked Room gallery
in
Kiev
,
told journalists about her flight from Ukraine to Italy at the end of February and beginning of March.
From the Russian invasion on February 24, the curator loads her car with several works of art and part of a monumental installation by a Ukrainian artist, Pavlo Makov, the
Fountain of Exhaustion
(
Fountain of Exhaustion
) .
.
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Maria Lanko then heads west for a six-day trip.
She crosses the border with difficulty, rushes through Romania, Hungary and Austria, before reaching Venice and depositing there the
Fountain of Exhaustion
which will be exhibited to the public at the 59th Art Biennale, whose start is scheduled for April 23.
80 countries, including Ukraine, will have an exhibition pavilion but that of Moscow will be closed, boycotted by its own artists and curator, who are protesting against the conflict.
Knowing and Protecting Ukrainian Artists
Arrived without damage in Venice, the
Fountain of Exhaustion
was reassembled on site.
The work is made up of an immense plinth on which are mounted 78 funnels arranged in height and in a triangle with a device for supplying and dripping water from top to bottom.
Only a few drops flow on the base of the fountain to
"symbolize exhaustion"
in the face of war, explained Maria Lanko.
Untransportable, this base of the installation was remanufactured in a workshop in Milan.
In addition, to promote and protect Ukrainian artists and their works abroad, Maria Lanko, together with other curators from her country, created a
“Ukrainian Emergency Fund for Art”.
Passed by New York, where many American-Ukrainians live and pole of the art market and fundraising, Maria Lanko reported a collection of approximately
"1.54 million hryvnia"
, Ukrainian currency , or more than 52,000 dollars, with the
“support”
of nearly 200 artists and cultural workers.
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For the Kiev curator,
“it is important to exhibit Ukrainian art because Ukraine remains widely (known) in the West as part of the Russian cultural field”
.
She lamented that
"nobody differentiates between the two countries and their cultures"
, while Ukraine and Russia
"are not just different, they are complete opposites"
.