On the 26th of September 2012 at 16:00 at the Sevastopol Art Museum in Crimea, the Ukrainian curatorial collective HUDRADA is opening its new, 4th exhibition, “Disputed Territory”. The exhibition will include works by nineteen artists from Ukraine and other countries, and is dedicated to the conquest and liberation of social and political territory. The opening few days of the exhibition will feature a packed programme of discussions.
Disputed territories are rips in the stiff fabric of a world which is split into spheres of influence. They are animate spaces, formed by the changeable whims of human wisdom and madness. They offer hope for change, and are attractive because they give you a chance to place your bets, to take part in the game. They promise gratification through confrontations, and they are capable of bringing conflict back to life in places where you might think that bleak dogmatic constructs had taken root for good. The value of disputed territories lies in hope and in duality.
We are moving along a volatile border, a place from which we can discern the constant shifting of battle lines, the point where the violent outburst is concentrated, as it occurs again and again.
Where exactly is this disputed territory?
The core interests of “Disputed Territory” are in social interaction, in exclusion, in marginalisation, gender and sexuality, in war between private and common interests, in public space and its acquisition, in the choices people make as civilians, politicians, and activists, and above all in the field of power.
Could these be the very places from which we can launch our own pre-emptive strike, today?
To keep disputed territories within our field of view means we have to violate subordinate connections, to burst through the dam of ideological decoration to a place where hope springs forth from feelings of loss and discomfort.
We have to break away from the absorbing power of parody and new religious doctrines with their clear consciences, and move towards a reality in which disputed territories are still subject to political conquest, and are ready to become places which people can inhabit.
Exhibition curators: HUDRADA collective http://hudrada.tumblr.com/
Exhibition participants: Adrian Paci (Albania), Anna Zvyagintseva, Ivan Melnichuk, YevgeniaBelorusets, Nikita Kadan, Yuri Solomko, Esther Kempf (Switzerland), Aleksey Salmanov, SimonaRota (Spain), LesyaKhomenko, LadaNakonechna, Aleksey Gnedenko, AlinaKleitman, UlyanaBychenkova, NikolayRidniy, TanzLaboratorium, FNO (Russia), R.E.P.
More about the “Disputed Territory” http://hudrada.tumblr.com/disputedterritory
Yevgenia Belorusets
Portrait of Amal
Photographs, 2012 // Photo: Hudrada
Exhibition view // Photo: Hudrada
