On 20 March, the exhibition “What We Talk About When We Talk About Crimea” featuring works by Ukrainian artists will open at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the organisers have announced.
According to them, the exhibition aims to tell the world about Crimea through the work of Ukrainian artists, including those of Crimean Tatar origin. The displays explore personal and cultural losses following Russia’s temporary occupation of the peninsula in 2014, which marked the beginning of its war against Ukraine. The project raises the question of what Ukraine, Europe, and the world will look like tomorrow — and what they stand to lose if they fail to truly see Crimea.
The exhibition is organised by the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform, commissioned by the Ukrainian Institute with the support of the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine programme.
“With this exhibition, we want to share the sense of rupture and loss that Ukraine has experienced due to the temporary occupation of Crimea, and to reveal the peninsula’s uniqueness as a gateway between civilisations — which ultimately offers a key to understanding Ukraine’s cultural phenomenon,” say the exhibition’s curators, Oksana Dovhopolova and Kateryna Semenyuk.
The artists draw on personal memories, reflect on Crimean Tatar identity after the loss of home, and address themes of resistance and the defence of their native land.
“This exhibition is not only about a temporarily lost peninsula, but about its core: its people, contemporary Crimean Tatar culture that pulses and pushes through artificial borders, and the hope of return,” emphasises co-curator of the exhibition and Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute, Alim Aliev.
The exhibition features works across various genres — from graphic art and painting to kinetic sculpture and digital simulation — by Oleksiy Borysov, Yuriy Yefanov, Emine Ziyatdin, Vlodko Kaufman, Vitaliy Kokhan, Pavlo Makov, Roman Mykhaylov, Sevilâ Nariman-kyzy, Rustem Skybin, Oleh Tistol, Khalil Khalilov, Anton Shebetko, and Elmira Shemsedinova. The exhibition designer is Oleksandr Burlaka.
The exhibition will run until 28 June at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.