While the UK prepares to host the 64th Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of Ukraine, which was relocated due to a full-scale invasion, the Eurofest, a two-week cultural festival, is underway in Liverpool. Among its numerous collaborations and activities is the Home programme — the largest exhibit of Ukrainian photography in the UK up to date, which will be accompanied by a series of publications and events. Presented by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatsky from Ukrainian.Photographies  in partnership with Open Eye Gallery, and other organisations in the Liverpool City Region, the showcase reflects on the question, What does home mean?

Co-curator of the programme, Viktoria Bavykina, comments: “It’s been wonderful working with Open Eye Gallery and EuroFest team. We felt solidarity, support and great attention to Ukrainian photography and Ukraine throughout all stages of the project. We need to remember that it is because of the Russian war in Ukraine that Eurovision takes place in Liverpool, and we prepared this project here. And we are incredibly grateful to our army for defending us and fighting for our home now. Home programme is extensive and ambitious, and one of the main reasons is that home means a lot and could be very different for everyone. Home could mean family and friends; home could mean your culture, heritage, landscape or memories. The meaning of home changes and becomes more critical when you understand that your home could be taken away from you. One of the main goals of our program was to share all these meanings of home through Ukrainian photography in different locations across the Liverpool City Region. Within the Home programme, we are proud to present the works of Igor Chekachkov, Polina Polikarpova, Marina Frolova, Alexander Chekmenev, Yaroslav Solop, Andriy Rachinskiy, Sasha Burlaka, Daria Svertilova, Elena Subach, Viacheslav Poliakov, Anton Shebetko, Anatoliy Babiychuk, Nazar Furyk, Lia Dostlieva, Andrii Dostliev, Sasha Kurmaz, Valentine Bo, Mykhaylo Palinchak, Victoria Pidust, Viktor Marushchenko and Evgeniy Pavlov.”

Home consists of 6 exhibitions across the Liverpool City Region, a film and a showcase of works in public spaces across all of Liverpool. The programme is curated by Mariama Attah, Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatsky.

Invited curators representing different cultural institutions across Europe and the UK are Kateryna Filyuk (IZOLYATSIA. Platform for cultural initiatives, Kyiv and 89 books, Palermo), Ben Harman (Stills – centre for photography, Edinburgh), Louise Pearson (National Galleries of Scotland), Amelie Schüle (FOAM Amsterdam), Monika Szewczyk (The Arsenal Gallery, Białystok), and Lindsay Taylor (the University of Salford Art Collection, Salford) who shared their perspectives on Ukrainian photography through the projects they selected and commented on.

EEP Berlin has put together a schedule of forthcoming events from the Home project. To find out more, it is recommended that you keep an eye on Open Eye Gallery updates and follow Ukrainian.Photographies, which is an online platform created by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatsky in 2022. This platform features periodic exhibitions of works by Ukrainian photographers, along with commentary on Ukrainian photographic practices, gathered from the varied viewpoints of numerous European intellectuals and cultural figures.

 

Public realm. Home diptychs

Six Ukrainian photographers tell their stories about home through images. Six UK poets, representing the UK nations and Liverpool, respond with a short poem. These diptychs will be situated at the train stations, ferry terminals and the University of Liverpool.

Featured photographers: Maryna Frolova, Alexander Chekmenev, Igor Chekachkov, Polina Polikarpova, Yaroslav Solop, Mykhaylo Palinchak.

Poetry inspired by the vibrant and diverse contemporary Ukrainian photography is an essential part of this programme: there will be new commissions curated by the Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library, workshops from Liverpool Poetry Space and the Windows Project, a poetry evening at Open Eye Gallery as a part of The European Poetry Festival 2023, a lecture by Ilya Kaminsky commissioned by the University of Liverpool Centre for New and International Writing and The Poetry Society, as well as a book, a film, a magazine and photography/poetry diptychs in Liverpool’s public realm.

The poets: Deryn Rees-Jones, Jackie Kay, James Conor Patterson, John Hegley, Hanan Issa, Roger McGough, curated by the National Poetry Library.

 

More information here.

 

Home. Resistance 

 

Location: Williamson Art Gallery and Museum

On View: 26.04. – 27.05. 2023

Opening times: Wed-Thu, Sat 10-17 h . Fri 10-21 h

This exhibition offers various interpretations of the concept of Resistance by bringing together the work of 3 different Ukrainian photographers. 

Mykhaylo Palinchak had never covered military conflicts before but after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he transformed his photographic practices to record the atrocities committed by the Russian army and the resistance of the Ukrainian people. 

At this time, Andrii Rachinskiy also turned to the documentary genre, recording the widespread practice of people painting over the road signs and toponyms to disorient the occupation army. 

Elena Subach’s project Lamkist (Fragility) is aimed at the poetisation and monumentalisation of mundane and fragile ordinary things, a reflection on the often unnoticed artifacts of the everyday. It reveals the presence of resistance in the coming together and coming apart of natural and man-made objects. 

 

More information is here.

Home. Land 

 

Location: Norton Priory Museum

On View: 27 . 4 . 2023 – 31 . 5 . 2023

Opening times: Fri-Tue 10-17 h

The two featured Ukrainian photography projects demonstrate different aspects of being with a place – from owning to conquering it to cultivating or occupying it. In Anatoliy Babiychuk’s project, the village of Horaivka stands as an exemplary story of a small village that has kept a traditional way of living, cultivating a deep connection with the land typical of Ukrainian tradition. 

 

Location: Walled Garden

On View: 27 . 4 . 2023 – 31 . 5 . 2023

Opening times: Fri-Tue 10-17 h

Exhibited in the walled garden, Black on Prussian Blue by Andriy Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva explores the notion of a perpetrator’s gaze based on the study of the photographs from the family album of a Wehrmacht soldier who served in the Luftwaffe during WWII.

More information is here. 

 

Home. Perspectives  

 

Location: Open Eye Gallery

On View: 4. 5 – 21. 5. 2023

Opening times: Tue-Sun 10-17 h

This exhibition highlights contemporary Ukrainian photography by reflecting the vibrancy, diversity and creativity of modern Ukrainian culture. The Home. Perspectives exhibition brings together diverse projects from 17 Ukrainian artists who offer distinct approaches to image creation, and ways of seeing and thinking about Ukraine.

Featured photographers: Valentine Bo; Igor Chekachkov; Alexander Chekmenev; Andrii Dostliev & Lia Dostlieva; Sasha Kurmaz & Sasha Burlaka; Viktor Marushchenko; Evgeniy Pavlov; Victoria Pidust; Viacheslav Poliakov; Polina Polikarpova; Andriy Rachynskiy; Anton Shebetko; Yaroslav Solop; Elena Subach; Daria Svertilova.

 

More information is here. 

Home. Liberty 

 

Location: Unity Theatre

On View: 1. 5 – 12. 5. 2023

Opening times: Tue-Fri 11-19 h, Fri 12th 11-16 h

The liberty to feel free and comfortable with yourself, to be yourself wherever and however you want. Liberty that must be protected, fought for, and defended. Liberty as national and individual, as a choice, as responsibility. To Know Us Better is a photography project and exhibition by Anton Shebetko, celebrating queer Ukrainians who are living or temporarily staying in other countries in Europe. Their experience and hopes for a better future are documented in a series of portraits and heartfelt interviews.

More information here.

 

Home. Making

 

Location: Kirkby Gallery

On View: 01.05 – 15.06.2023

Opening times: Mon-Fri 10-17 h . Sat 10-13 h

Making one’s own reality or adapting an existing one. Seeing things differently or making them look different. Bringing things together, juxtaposing, reshaping ideas – making sense of them. The exhibition highlights the works of Nazar Furyk, who represents the generation of artists whose practices are characterised by an exploratory approach to photographic imagery and photographic subjects. His project Simple Things blurs the boundaries of photographic genres, searching for new pictorial forms or questioning the role of the medium today.  

 

More information is here.

 

Home. Settings 

 

Location: Atkinson

On View: 04.05 – 15.06. 2023

Opening times: Mon-Sat 12-16 h

The projects My World is not Real Enough for an Apocalypse by Sasha Kurmaz and Dreamland Donbas by Viktor Marushchenko were both shot in the Donetsk region but at different times and told about different people and communities.  

The heroes and heroines of Marushchenko’s photographs are the illegal coal miners trying to make ends meet. Kurmaz’s story is about the ‘social life of the young generation in the Donetsk region, its form and relationship in the environment.’ 

Viktor Maruschenko was a celebrated documentary photographer who became the central figure in the popularisation of contemporary photography and the development of photography education in Ukraine. Sasha Kurmaz is one of the leading contemporary Ukrainian artists working with photography, among other mediums; he also was a student and later a teacher at Maruschenko’s school. 

 

More information here. 

Cover image: Daria Svertilova, from the Temporary Homes series, 2019-ongoing