THE UKRANIAN PAVILION, BERLIN
BEREZNITSKY GALLERY, KIEV / BERLIN (closed)
JUNE 20 - JULY 25, 2007
EXHIBITION SHUT DOWN ON JUNE 29, 2007
Ilya Chichkan, Volodomir Lugotov, Oksana Pasaiko, Alexander Petlura, R.E.P. Group
What does "national representation" mean? Is it a birthright or a branding campaign? Whose nation or politics does it represent?
The Venice Biennale has long been the art world's Olympics, giving individual artists within or without the city's Giardini pavilions a time and space to stand in for their nation. Certain elements to the event, competition and subsequent coverage still carry a slightly colonial air. Used as a lens, certain forms of these events highlight the unsaid criteria we give to projects deemed to be at an approved standard yet often doing so by pushing the “-ness factor” of preconceived expectations from an emerging or “hot” market. Support for art meeting stereotypes of “Chinese-ness” or “Ukraine-ness” is evident or promoted in the work on display.
With the prevalent concerns for marketing strategies and promotional tactics, biennials and all other seemingly official forms of representation can immediately be unmasked as mere simulations, representing mechanisms of the art market via an academicized art fair rather than aiming to productively address current cultural concerns. “The Ukrainian Pavilion, Berlin” is an unofficial supplement to its privatized Venetian counterpart, one that provides an alternate and more direct route for presenting issues urgent or latent in Ukrainian cultural production.
