Scattered Communities
Funding: Robert Bosch Stiftung, Goethe-Institut in Ukraine
Partners: Asortymentna Kimnata, Visual Culture Research Center
Duration: September 2024–January 2025
Budget: 1,773,200 UAH
Curatorial group: Alona Karavai, Serhiy Klymko, Yaroslav Futymskyi
Project management: Alona Karavai, Darya Khrystyniuk
Contact: board@asortymentna.org
“Scattered Communities” is a program for Ukrainian artists who stayed in Ukraine and who left because of the war. It involves processing these different experiences in collaborative artworks aimed at understanding community ties, the theme of migration — at different levels and forms — and supporting artistic dialogue within the Ukrainian artistic community.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, some artists were forced to leave their homes, some stayed in Ukraine, and some joined the army. We do not have precise figures or statistics that would fully capture the experiences of these groups. Just as we do not have precise tools to measure tensions, guilt, disagreements or broken ties. What we can do is support and build new dialogues that bring out the different voices in the artistic community.
The first iteration of the program started in October 2024 and will last until January 2025. 26 artists living in Ukraine, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Portugal, the USA and the UK were selected to participate in the “Scattered Communities” project. We accepted applications from both established duos and those who are open to finding a partner for work.
- In total, about a dozen online meetings were held within the program. Among them, two were focused on finding a partner for work, and one discussion meeting dedicated to the topic of connections and ruptures in the artistic community. There were also thematic online meetings: they talked about (dis)cancellation, the hierarchy of trauma and the psychological dimension of tensions and linguistic scholasticism, love for (non)neighbors, and accessible practices of solidarity.
- In November and December, we focused on the individual work of the participants, as well as consultations with curators. We launched a mobility program within the project and provided funding for the production of seven collaborative works of art. In December, we held two paired artist talks — Mykola Ridny and Andriy Boyarov, Mykola Lebed and Oleksiy Podat.
- A presentation of finished works or developments in the work-in-progress format “Scattered Communities” is planned for January 2025.
All proprietary copyrights to the works created within the Scattered Communities program remain with their authors — we expect only a short disclaimer.
The “Scattered Communities” program is implemented by Asortymentna Kimnata and Insha Osvita with the support of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Goethe-Institut Ukraine. Warm thanks to the Kyiv Biennale/Visual Culture Research Center, the Ukrainian Institute in Germany, Office Ukraine in Austria, and the teams of Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, zusa, commit and MitOst e.V. for their support in developing the program, information and friendly assistance.
