Exhibition program

Artists: Tereza Barabash, Yuriy Bolsa, Grzegorz Bożek, Piotr Desperak, Alevtina Kakhidze, Ola Kozioł & Suavas Lewy, Myro Klochko & Anatoliy Tatarenko, Paweł Korbus, Dmytro Krasnyi, Zdzisław Pacholski, Sergiy Petlyuk, Andriy Rachinskiy & Daniil Revkovskiy, Vasyl Savchenko, Vahram Mkhitarya, Ewa Zarzycka, Krzysztof Zając

The vicious cycle of human-made and repeated disasters for thousands of years has brought us to a standstill and undermined our faith in humanity and the future. Has the civilizational development of humanism really occurred? Or will the primitive human instincts of domination, control and possession remain untamed even in the face of the destruction of humanity and the Earth? The works presented at the exhibition reflect the common sense of the imminent self-annihilation of the human race as a result of the irreversible effects of environmental degradation, the nuclear threat and the war in Ukraine, which in fact has a wide impact on the functioning of the entire world. Yet the authors of the works presented at the exhibition do not remain passive observers. The artists analyze the intersections of historical memory and the socio-political realities of the present, at the same time rejecting individual melancholy in favor of multidimensional forms of criticism, resistance and indifference. The exhibition as a whole is devoid of utopian illusions framed by anthropocentric, modern logic, and is instead based on a dystopian perspective and the recognition that coexistence is inherently in conflict. How we use this conflictual nature of coexistence to solve the environmental and humanitarian crises we face today will largely determine the future we live in. /Oksana Karpovets/

We live in a world in which our society has been burdened with uncertainty about the future and a sense of spiritual fragmentation, and our bonds of belonging have been put to a severe test. In the face of the ongoing war in Ukraine, culture should play an important role to strengthen our sense of identity in the democratic world. Art also has an importance that cannot be overestimated, because like a barometer it reflects the instability of the world and the process of creation, dissolution and re-establishment of values.

The “Human” exhibition is intended to integrate artists’ efforts towards a world that gives us a minimum of certainty for tomorrow and mutual solidarity. The global crises, and in particular the Russian aggression against Ukraine, prove that a person can lose loved ones overnight and have their social environment shaken.

We live in times when there are over twenty armed conflicts around the world. However, public opinion was most shocked by the crimes of genocide in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities. For a person living in the world after Auschwitz and Bucza, all fundamental narratives have lost their power. Perhaps the world and man need to be reinvented. “Human” is a project that aims to be a new voice and a new narrative in an still old world.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, refugee artists and their children were invited to the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, who stayed in our institution for half a year. During their stay, during numerous meetings, workshops and conversations, the initial concept of the “Human” exhibition was born, which arose from the natural need to refer to the issue of the war in Ukraine, the artists directly affected by it and their relatives. The authors of the project concept are Oksana Karpovets from Ukraine and Edyta Wolska – director of the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Słupsk. The concept of the project goes beyond immediate circumstances and assumes the presentation of works that illustrate the humanistic fracture that affected the world and culture long before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Modern man lives with the baggage of difficult experiences and as an individual, torn by the winds of history, who must reunite the world. Therefore, the aim of the exhibition is an attempt to describe and tell the world anew. “Human” is a project to which the curators – Oksana Karpovets and Edyta Wolska – invited artists mainly from Poland and Ukraine.