How do artists respond to political oppression, conflict, and censorship? What is the relationship of art to vehicles of social change? How can oppositional and alternative voices be assembled? Brought together here, contemporary crises—whether political, economic, or environmental, and across divergent geographic contexts—offer ways to critically rethink and reassess international trends as well as local urgencies. Enhancing an understanding of the vast landscape of struggle around the globe, while invoking heterogenous discourses, this Theme offers different forms of knowing, frequently beyond, or in direct opposition to, narratives that are in the process of being constructed—or will be in the near future.
In this essay, Veronika Molnar writes about Hungarian Roma artist Omara, whose diverse practice encompassing painting, intervention, and media appearances challenged the status quo of Hungary’s homogenous contemporary art scene from the early 2000s until the artist’s death in 2020.
This conversation between filmmaker and artist Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi and C-MAP Asia Fellow Wong Binghao is accompanied by a two-week screening of Nguyen-Chi’s film Into The Violet Belly (2022), and a collage by designer Ghazaal Vojdani that responds to the conversation.
This essay highlights the reconstruction of memory through material culture in Ukrainian museums since the 1990s. Within the context of the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts, the Ivan Honchar Museum, and the Maidan Museum—all of which are in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital—cultural workers have responded to politically salient events, including Ukrainian independence, the Maidan revolution, and the current war.
What is common and what differs between Georgian artist collectives of the late 1980s and those of today are among the questions explored by curator and researcher Vija Skangale in this text.
vqueeram and Vishal Jugdeo reflect on their film Does Your House Have Lions (2021), which was screened earlier this year as part of Doc Fortnight 2022: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media.
In this text focused on how postcolonial and decolonial processes are reflected in contemporary Ukrainian culture, art historian Svitlana Biedarieva examines methods of decolonizing Ukrainian cultural discourse through the lens of works by contemporary Ukrainian artists—specifically those addressing complex aspects of identity conflicts actualized by Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.
Madeline Murphy Turner analyzes recent artworks by the late Jaider Esbell, a pioneering artist, enabler, and advocate of Indigenous perspectives, environmentalism, and land rights.
The program showcases moving image works by contemporary artists from Ukraine. Created between the Maidan revolution, which was followed by Crimean annexation and occupation of Donbas in 2014—and the full-scale Russian invasion launched on February 24 of this year—the works in the program take the viewer through the country’s urgencies and contradictions, the streets and fringes of its cities, and the experiences of its inhabitants.
The conversation with Vasyl Cherepanyn, head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) in Kyiv, took place several days before Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, reflecting on the local art scene and political situation, forced to be left unfinished abrutply.
Curator Veronika Molnár discusses questions of industrial agriculture, techno-optimism, and the fossil energy infrastructure with the artist Rita Süveges, also touching upon the pervasive role of the current right-wing political regime in Hungary’s contemporary art scene.
A conversation between the artist Emilija Škarnulytė, Sophie Cavoulacos, and Valentine Umansky on two of Emilija’s upcoming projects: An Evening with Emilija Škarnulytė, streaming online as part of MoMA’s Virtual Cinema series, and a presentation at Tate Modern.
In her detailed analysis of Heman Chong’s nearly two-decade-long artistic practice, art historian and curator Kathleen Ditzig contextualizes the ways in which Chong has consistently and intently negotiated with cultural policy and national politics.
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