Mykolaiv ART Week: MEMORY

The art contest of the online exhibition of the 6th Mykolaiv ART Week Contemporary Art Festival attracted 260 participants from 5 continents of the world. The theme of this year’s festival is MEMORY / MEMORY, so artists sent works on this topic.

For two weeks, the MY ART Cultural Platform and Mykolaiv Development Agency collected proposals from all interested artists and independent artists working on the topics of memory culture, history of national and personal identity.

“After a year-long pause, we are returning to artistic rethinking of the surrounding reality through the festival. Every year we choose a special theme for it that reflects the current reality in which we live. In the midst of a full-scale war, Ukraine is fighting for its own future, while returning to the themes of identity and processing its past. That is why the theme of this festival is MEMORY. This is what we want to talk about today,” says Dmytro Larchenko, the curator of the competition.

In total, the competition received 272 applications from 260 participants from 5 continents. These are applicants from 31 cities of Ukraine (Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Uzhhorod, Poltava, Kherson, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Mukachevo, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Irpin, Bila Tserkva, Brovary, Vyshneve, Kaniv, Slavutych, Rivne, Kalush, Lubny, Drohobych, Vyshhorod, Malyn, Horokhiv, Vilnyansk), and relocated and temporarily displaced artists from the temporarily occupied cities of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. As well as artists from 33 countries: Australia (Melbourne), Bangladesh, Great Britain (London, Hereford), Greece, Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Egypt, Israel (Netanya), India (Nagpur, Pune), Italy (Bologna, Grosseto), Spain, Kazakhstan (Jairam), China (Hong Kong), Latvia (Riga, Jurmala), Lithuania, Mexico (Merida), Nepal (Kathmandu), the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Germany (Berlin, Cologne), Norway, South Korea (Busan, Imson), North Macedonia (Skopje), Poland (Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Poznan, Czestochowa, Będzin), Portugal, Romania (Bucharest), Serbia (Zrenjanin), Singapore, USA (Richmond, Santa Barbara), Turkey (Istanbul, Sinop), Finland (Rauma), France (Paris), Croatia (Split), Switzerland, Scotland (Glasgow).

The MEMORY project aims to “decipher” and “bring out” one’s own memories through the works of artists, and helps to look into the depths of the collective past to understand one’s own future and the whole of humanity.

“War leads to numerous losses, both of human lives and social ties. This year, more than 20% of the contestants are foreigners. Another 30% of the applicants are Ukrainians who were forced to evacuate abroad and are now temporarily staying in Europe. In addition, among the remaining Ukrainian artists, there are many who were forced to move to other Ukrainian cities from the temporarily occupied territories or to secure a new place away from the war zone. And this is our new reality, when, under various circumstances, we have to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember,” the festival organizers emphasize.

Artworks in various genres were submitted for the competition: photography, graphics and painting, collage, animation, video art, performance, sculpture and installation. View the online exhibition: https://memory.myart.org.ua/en/memory-en/

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