* Dream – is literary translation of Mriya — Ukrainian aircraft, the biggest in the world
Pavilion of Ukraine at the 58th International art exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2019. Participants: All Ukrainian artists* (*i.e. all artists who have agreed to participate, 1143 artists)
Curator: Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Stanislav Turina and Anton Varga).
Organizer: The Ministry of culture of Ukraine.
Co-organizer: Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, Poland).
Institutional partner: National Art Museum of Ukraine.
Location: Arsenale, Sestiere di Castello, Campiello Tana 2169/F, 30122 Venice.
How does the cargo of an aircraft influence the shape of its shadow? The digital archive carried by the “Dream” encompasses living dreams, whether present or past, overt or enigmatic, articulated or even unconscious. Despite personal beliefs, politics, historical circumstances, or daily realities that may have marginalized them from the global contemporary art context, their presence at the 58th Biennale Arte reaffirms their history and prompts us to examine the form and content of shadows cast over the Biennale.
Has Ukrainian art remained obscured in Europe’s shadow? Or has contemporary art discourse struggled to acknowledge Ukraine’s intricate history? In the absence of a parallel written and documented canon, can our mythologies respond to the more celebrated narratives in Western contemporary art?
History and myth share the same silhouette. The fact that the “Dream” was conceived in the USSR highlights the paradoxes of heritage and culture at the close of history. Despite its technological ambition, only one edition of the “Dream” was produced, making it both an unparalleled engineering achievement and a symbol of unfulfilled expectations.
While such histories influence our perspective as Ukrainian artists, they don’t wholly define us.
The narrative of the “Dream” casting its shadow over the Giardini della Biennale may transform into myth through retellings within the pavilion and the media, but we view this as an integral element of our curatorial proposition’s dynamic body.
From the project’s inception, the pavilion itself was intended to be a “station” for conveying the myth. The pavilion’s shadow was also meant to fall upon the Giardini. As aptly put by Waldemar Tatarczuk, “the pavilion should become a ‘shadow of a shadow.'” This prompts the question: what does the viewer perceive? We encounter a relatively sparse, even ascetic space housing five performers and a video installation. The setting resembles a conference or the aftermath of such a gathering after a storm. Each performer recounts an individual story from the perspectives of five participants in an ongoing situation: the Open Group, project opponents, the community, the authorities, and the Antonov State Company. To some extent, this stands as an imprint, a lithograph of the six months of preparations for this project—six months of effort, negotiations, and confrontations that reached the prime minister and president of the country. The pavilion performance once again fosters dialogue; it marks a step in the conversation, aiming to understand what occurred and how it impacted us.
The pavilion also showcases a two-channel video installation. The material for the first video was captured during the moment of securing the hard drive within the plane’s fuselage, a pause marked by a sense of anticipation. Extended scenes gradually shift in scale: from the aircraft’s overview in the hangar, through the cargo compartment, we venture into the plane’s tail section where the hard drive is silently secured on the belts, positioned for its flight. On the opposite side of the installation, we witness the typical life of the Giardini on the first preview day—people and locations in the gardens where the “Dream’s” shadow is destined to fall the following day.
