Can Exhibition Be An Act Of Solidarity?

Asia Tsisar: I think I would like to start with the main question of this conversation and just kind of see where it can lead us. So, I very welcome your thoughts on my small provocation. Can exhibition be an act of solidarity?

Aleksei Borisionok: As your question is, yeah, in a way provocative. I also have rather provocative answer. And for me, it's very simple. I think, as any other constellation — be it an exhibition, or be it a text, or be it a conference, or anything else — yes, I believe that it can be an act of solidarity.

I think that, of course, the context shapes it all. So, of course, kind of reviewing what solidarity effect any constellation is producing and how it's maintaining solidarity — because solidarity is very hard work of caring and hard work of communicating.

Of course, we can reflect and we can see if this act is successful, but in a way, definitely, art history in general — art history in all kinds of geographies — shows us that exhibition, and also exhibition can take a variety of different forms, can be a space of solidarity.

It also can be kind of performative solidarity — to show solidarity — which is also, I believe, sometimes might be important. But also it is a part of all kinds of cultural diplomacy projects and so on and so forth.

I hope that during our conversation we can also, with our particular context — which is a context of kind of post-uprising from one side, frustration from the other side — I still hope that there is also certain like hope there. Maybe we can unfold some of those questions.

Antonina Stebur: Probably, I also joined to what Aleksei said. And definitely, I think, because we are in this conversation, every one of us believes in solidarity as a tool for art. But at the same time, I also agree with Aleksei that solidarity is something very important when we make an exhibition — not only from a curatorial point of view, but also artistical point of view, an institutional point of view.

But at the same time, I always think about the entanglement of solidarity as a term. So it's not a very simple term, as well as solidarity has a very, very deep history and some obvious relationships that can be installed by and through solidarity. Our intention to express solidarity can lead to very different positive and negative side effects. It's also important to understand.

We can remember several classical solidarity exhibitions and different consequences of them. Because sometimes solidarity can have very positive intentions, but at the same time it can lead to some negative effects.

Could I provide an example of Bosnian collection of solidarity? Solidarity collection — this is a very typical tool, I think, from the sixties or seventies, when international artists and institutions, as a gesture of solidarity, give art pieces in a matter of support to a place that’s somehow affected by different oppression or war, to make it more visible.

And this is very important for local communities, like a signal that they are not alone. Because especially during the siege, people can feel isolation not only from a psychological point of view, but from a very, very material point of view. And that's why the intention of creation of the collection of solidarity was very important.

But we should understand that after the war, Bosnia was in a very dramatic and poor political and economical condition. And we know that art needs different institutions of caring, like museums, archives, storage.

Like a service work around art is very, very, very expensive, and they couldn't provide this infrastructure. They don't have, even now, museum for contemporary art — I mean like a building. And this collection was spread literally. For example, they put some big format oil on canvas in the library because they had a huge wall there, because they don't have money to create the museum.

And from this point of view, I started to think about the side effect of solidarity. It was very similar to the essay of Mauss — The Gift essay [1] — that he described the situation when gift means reinvestment in this gift. And this caring structure was for Bosnians almost impossible to create.

And this is a very uncomfortable gesture of solidarity. Now the cultural communities in Bosnia are in the situation of guilt, because they feel that someone from the Western world gave them very precious and very important pieces of art — because the list of artists in this collection was really impressive.

But at the same time, they don't have the real materiality because of the war to protect and to serve them. And this is a very uncomfortable gesture of solidarity, because instead of helping, they provide additional efforts.

Because in a situation when they should rebuild their building, of course they need to care about people more than art pieces. But at the same time, they feel guilty because they couldn't protect the art.

And this is an easy example of how our intention of solidarity can be translated and developed in the future in a local context.

Aleksei Borisionok: I think this is exactly also like this kind of, like, quite vile trait of solidarity, which is seen as a gift. And I think that this is something important for me—that solidarity is not a gift.

Basically, it's not something that also can establish certain hierarchies, in a way, like exactly like you mentioned, these anthropological studies. And solidarity can be this poisonous gift, which is seen as a sort of investment, as you also, Antonina, said, and which really subjugates also the way how you see what might be happening with this collection or with these artworks, how they can be taken care of, and so on and so forth.

And for that reason, I believe that solidarity is not an abstract category. And then, when we discuss it, it really depends on all kinds of material contexts and infrastructures and institutions and individuals, groups, collectives, politics, cultural politics, diplomacy—where this notion is kind of nested. And of course, yes, thank you for giving this interesting example that it can be a burden.

Asia Tsisar: I want to believe that I'm an optimist too, and that there is a potential for solidarity in exhibition as a form. But probably a full-scale invasion has changed and influenced my perspective drastically.

And I'm much more focused now on the side effects that you mentioned. And, for example, one of the problematic points that I see is that solidarity in the frame of work of an exhibition means that you literally exhibit something. So you show something that's supposed to trigger a certain kind of emotions and a certain understanding from the audience. And this gesture divides people to those with whom we should be in solidarity and the side that should express the solidarity. And this role division often risks to predict your possibilities, your feelings, or even behavior.

And the other problem is that solidarity happens on the occasion of an emergency situation. And those exhibitions can risk to narrow down a very complex system, as one's culture or art can be, to explain or illustrate this emergency situation for the viewer. So my concern here is also related to how such kinds of exhibitions can lead to stereotypization.

Aleksei Borisionok: Thank you, Asia, for bringing these, I believe, to very fundamental questions, which are in a way for many, many years being discussed and also in different historical, geographical situations. Actually, I believe also much earlier than what we know under contemporary art. It's a really essential question here, which I believe, yeah, does not have an easy answer.

And maybe just to kind of talk, to think along with you, the first kind of this paradox, and I believe the paradox concerns not only exhibitions which are done as an act or gesture of solidarity, but actually in general as this kind of exhibitionary complex - modern exhibitionary complex, but not only - is kind of this paradox of spectatorship and participation, engagement. I believe that it is truly a dialectical notion. I don't think they have one resolution, and they, of course, make sense in certain cultural situations, political situations, economic situations. And to that respect, my answer to that would be that spectatorship could be a form of camaraderie, but also it can be a form of betrayal.

And I think in, like, in many works through modern art history, through contemporary art history, this paradox was revealed that basically when you watch something and you are not engaged, they're also feeling overwhelmed. This is also like one foundation of criticism of this notion of solidarity for Aruna D'Souza with her Imperfect Solidarities, which is based on this empathy, which is always falling apart, especially in our kind of highly mediated world.

And then we simply are overwhelmed with the amount of imagery coming from all kinds of horrible situations in different geographies. Yeah, so I think it really depends on what we understand by an exhibition and what we understand by solidarity.

Because for me, as I already said, exhibition can take so many different forms, and some of them are kind of working, highlighting different forms of engagement. And this very much depends on where the exhibition is happening, which kind of institutional or non-institutional space is hosting it, who is coming to see the exhibition, who is participating, who is curating, who is giving money, or if there is any budget or something like that. And I believe that some of the projects, some of the exhibitions and works can actively work with this paradox and can reflect on this complicated relationship between spectating, seeing, contemplating, suffering basically, and also kind of activating it or trying to work with engagement.

And I'm actually very curious to go a little bit more into details here and maybe just remember some of the examples to be more precise and concrete.

Asia Tsisar: Okay. An example from the personal experience also comes from the beginning of the full-scale invasion. I lived in Warsaw back then, and I remember my email box just exploded with requests from art institutions all around the world asking me to provide a list of Ukrainian artists who usually work with photo or video, so something which is very easy to exhibit, because they wanted to organize an exhibition in support of Ukraine.

And it was very, very confusing and challenging me, because the only answer I was able to provide is that, okay, here is the list of Ukrainian curators who are currently in Ukraine, and if they have time, space, and emotional capacity to do this work for you, they can organize you an exhibition to present their view of the situation.

But to open an exhibition with the number of artists from certain country to support something. I don't know. I just think it's a little bit hypocritical. Also because I don't really know who benefits from this kind of events. Do we do these things to contribute to our understanding of the situation? Or does it help the institution to stay visible with something which is extremely highlighted in the media? So yeah, this is the situation that I very vividly remember, and I don't think I was able to overcome it.

I still think about it a lot, also in relation to many other places and events all around the world, both visible and invisible for newsleads. We call those exhibitions a solidarity practice, as it's supposed to increase awareness of those outside, but this is also a very violent way of exploitation of insiders. And I probably believe that you also face something like this.

Antonina Stebur: Yeah, I'm totally sure that every one of us, once upon a time, but many, many times, feel like reporter, data collector, or translator of data and knowledge about artists and curators for art institutions from another geographical position to use it for their own purpose. And you even can't control or influence how this information would be used.

And probably the colonial or feministic approach also can be very useful when we talk about solidarity. I mean - "Nothing About Us Without Us”. It's very important. I also like the idea of Aruna D'Souza that when we build solidarity on empathy, first of all, it means that we feel empathy with someone that we have already known, that has the similar culture, the similar lifestyle. But at the same time, we have an illusion that we understand the other.

And this situation, instead of horizontal relationship, creates a very hierarchical relationship, because usually when we talk about solidarity, it means that we build solidarity towards someone in a situation of oppression or in a very unstable and subaltern situation, when you do feel overwhelmed because you feel this emotional exploitation all the time. Not only because of this conversation, but because this email is only a small piece of another.

And probably why I remember this "Nothing About Us Without Us", it helps to understand that solidarity practices in art focus not only on expression, but on hearing. It means to hear and to create space for others. This is important, I think.

Aleksei Borisionok: Exactly. I'm on the same page with you. And I think we also were able to find ourselves in the same situations many times, which is, again, like I think not only connected to the contemporary art field, but these kinds of extractive practices are well spread in academia, in all kinds of cultural spheres, and much more beyond that.

So, to that respect, I'm wondering what is this attention. In order to understand that, of course, we have to see what is the contemporary landscape, which extracts all these sufferings, violence, really puts it into the spirals of social media, of news production, like all this media apparatus, how it is mediating and how it is producing what we see now in so many different geographies. And to that respect, of course, I think that this is really an important task for many involved people who are working in institutions, and I'm sure there are people who are really trying to take care of different situations and really try to see their institutions as somewhat contemporary, who possibly can react to what is happening in the world.

And for me, when I see the institution is doing something like that, I always wonder if it's really part of their everyday politics—what they do in their programming, what exhibitions they do, what audiences they attract, how they work with education.

or it’s just a spiritual signaling, and just, you know, as we also observed, for instance, with the Black Lives Matter movement, which was in many different respects an important momentum. So, not reacting to that was also strange, right? But at the same time, how many institutions really started to see this problem as a structural one—to their own teams, to their own audiences, to their own work, right?

And of course, this is extremely hard to imagine your situation, for example, when being completely disoriented and then you've been spammed with all these requests. So, this is a very complicated situation, of course. And on the other hand, in this kind of really devastating war of erasure, I think that the attention also might be something which might be helpful. But again, it's very contradictory. So I'm also here completely with you.

But at the same time, and this is something that I think Antonina started to speak about, of course, solidarity, which is again a very controversial term and very overused term, is always for me about material conditions. So, also to rephrase this feminist, decolonial notion of "nothing about us without us." But again, it's not only about the attention or this kind of performative solidarity, right?

But it's always about providing space for refuge, material resources, which can also help artists or curators. And there are many, many different forms which can create those spaces. So, I'm just finishing this thought that when we think about this—what this attention really means? -I think it is also very important to see how this attention is distributed, because what we have seen in February–March 2022 is a very different situation from what we've seen with the escalation of what is happening in Gaza now, for example. This attention is kind of a resource in very capitalist terms, which is also very unevenly distributed.

So I think for all of us, it's very important to think actually what can be seen as, let's say, more like material, infrastructural solidarity, or simply a spiritual signaling to that respect.

Antonina Stebur: Yeah, I would like to agree with Aleksei and to add that when I think about solidarity exhibitions, for me, sometimes it's very difficult to understand what it doesn’t mean. I see solidarity in art more in a long-term relationship.

To return to the Bosnian collection, what happened—they just provided all these art pieces and put all this extra work with this care. But if it’s really a gesture of solidarity, they also should, together with Bosnian institutions and cultural communities, provide additional help on how to serve this collection. And that's why when we talk about solidarity, I agree with Aleksei about the material conditions, and probably it's more important than just one exhibition with a number of artists.

Solidarity is very often something that redefines how we use the space of art institutions. I don’t know, probably a good example of that is Słonecznik [2] — how the community who built Słonecznik tried to rethink how they can use the space of the MSN Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in a completely different way.

They use art not as art pieces, but as tools to mediate and navigate different communities, to provide them real help, but at the same time to glue people who flee the country, to help them navigate together, to be together, to create community together. It wasn’t like, “we created the space and you can use it.” We created the space together by using art tools, and we couldn’t think about Słonecznik as ten or a hundred different events. We should think about them as a whole of infrastructures, as a whole of initiatives.

And all these initiatives come together and form this gesture and navigate this solidarity. And sometimes this is not about the artist’s handle into a white wall, but how we can rethink how we can use art and art facilities for someone who lacks access to that.

Asia Tsisar: I'm very grateful for your thoughts on this. I just wanted to highlight the thing that you mentioned and that really resonates with me: solidarity is not only a gesture towards others, but it is also an act of rethinking yourself—a systematic revision of your own work and attitude towards the world around you. I would like to see solidarity not as something that equals attention, but as a starting point for rebuilding the structures of inequality.

And here, I probably want to talk this through your personal experience and ask how the situation with the protests in Belarus influenced your vision of what solidarity can be and how it should be enabled.

Aleksei Borisionok: Yes, it's a very complicated question in a way. Maybe I would approach it from the following perspective. For me, actually, what stays with me for a long time and somehow really troubles me is this temporality of success and failure, because I think now, again, there are also different attempts to speak about the protests and the uprising in Belarus in terms of refiguration or temporality that exceeds its own failure. And this is something I was thinking a lot about recently, also in the aftermath of what is happening there, in a way.

And again, with a lot of frustration coming from exactly these contradictions of how solidarity works, how attention works, and how quickly it vanishes, I was very much interested in something that preoccupied me in my teenage years, which is basically the anarchist punk scene in Belarus. This scene was always a model for autonomous organizing, which, for example, the art field had to some degree, but also with very different politics and very different forms of cultural and political production.

And I was thinking that it is very interesting how so many acute ways of articulating the political landscape, environmental issues, feminism, and so on, were so well done by many protagonists of this scene, which I also consider myself a part of until now. What I was interested in, in a way, of how ways of massive social unrest in Belarus actually embodied so many different ways of organizing coming from this political anarchist scene in Belarus, which was always active and, I think very importantly, always contradicting the kind of official opposition—now mainstream in Belarus—criticizing all kinds of ideas about what Belarus might be, what it can be, or what it was. It was much more inclusive and basically worked on its politics from an understanding of solidarity as something imperfect and rather coming from, I would call it, a really ontological understanding of what mutual aid, care, and solidarity are.

And for me, that was such an insight: the way hundreds of thousands of people are now organizing comes from this politics, not from the official mainstream or non-official oppositional politics. This is very much embedded into the ontology of life. To that respect, those experiences of solidarity—mutual help, help to prisoners, fundraising, organizing, and later, of course, anti-war sabotage—are extremely important. They can be much more easily understood by many different groups around the globe instead of through national ideas or everything connected to the peculiar history of post-socialism and, not least, the Eastern European part of the world. So for me personally, the way I want to think about solidarity comes from these very, sometimes naive, sometimes acute and very wise ways of seeing what was happening in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and globally too.

Asia Tsisar: Can we go a bit deeper into this? I also wanted to connect this with the problem of distance. Just to explain the context: repressions imposed by the Belarusian government during and after the protests resulted in a wave of mass forced migration. Activists and volunteers, but also a huge part of the Belarusian art community, were forced to flee and ended up all around Europe, basically. I wanted to ask you how you keep connections and how you keep the community united, even though it is currently divided by distance. This is a common problem for many, Ukrainian artists going through something similar with the full-scale invasion. I have always been a bit jealous of the ability of the Belarusian community to preserve ties and to cooperate beyond the distance, also with those who remain in Belarus.

Aleksei Borisionok: I don't know, maybe Antonia wants to start here. I'm a little bit more pessimistic, I think.

Antonina Stebur: Yeah. Let's start the pessimistic part of our conversation, finally. I think that the revolution or the protest has different chapters, different waves. And this is also important—all this grassroots network and how people gather together in a matter of caring because they feel their fragility.

There's something important, especially at the beginning of the protest, in how people could organize not only in the art sphere but all over Belarusian society. It was very important because, probably, you know that Belarusian society, as any society somehow affected by totalitarianism or authoritarianism, is very atomized. One of the main criteria is that people couldn't trust each other. This, in the beginning of the protest, was very important, and people, you know, had not so much fear to trust each other, because any social and political collaboration means that you should trust to collaborate.

And I think that all these initiatives, and all these networks in plural, were created by very everyday life conditions. Not every of these initiatives had a strong political manifesto or some statements. It was about being helpful and caring for each other. And sometimes it was very spontaneous. I remember how Women in White was created. It was really spontaneous. There wasn't one organizer or two organizers of this movement. It was just people who were spontaneous to organize in a matter of caring and support. And this is a good part.

And now to return to the pessimistic part. Now we find ourselves in completely different conditions—the condition of atomized people when they start to think about one national idea, because there are a lot of people, even among the artists, who support this idea of a national state. And I really like the expression of Daria T., who wrote brilliant words: "As a lesbian, I couldn't support the idea of a national state."

This is something very crucial. And in her text, she continued that in the Lukashenko regime, or in the project of the national state—Belarusian state, sorry for that—she feels exclusion.

And I think that there are many people who also felt that. But at the same time, I think that now, especially in the artistic sphere, I couldn't say that we have a strong network or strong connection between each other.

Probably Aleksei had a different experience, but I talk about my experience, and I feel that many people who immigrate now somehow try to put themselves into this capitalistic, very competitive machine for earning money, and these people are atomized from each other. They are not about collaboration, but more about competition. And this is only one reason.

I think there are many reasons. Moreover, I think that a lot of people are simply tired. It's also very typical, because when we build grassroots initiatives, it means that you don't have enough resources to make it more or less stable. You should support it every day. And any political idea—you should support it every day—but people are tired.

It's also very typical for us. We are just human beings. And I think this is the second reason. And the third reason: many people feel disappointment.

I also don't like to think about the category of success or failure. I agree with Aleksei that nothing is final. If we think about another revolution, for example, Italian protests that take more than 10 years, it's a very prolonged, continuous project.

But when we read history and we hear that a revolution continued for 10 years, as a reader, you don't feel these 10 years. But as people who are involved in this protest, you feel your body is tired, you don't understand what to do, and you don't have energy even to care about yourself and your close circle.

I don't think that we can talk about a strong network between artists, but of course, I think that we have some circles. I don't think about Belarusian art as one community, but I think about plenty of communities.

Not every one of them is super connected. And I'm totally sure that we disagree with each other. And I think that this disagreement is also normal—it is a kind of normality.

Aleksei Borisionok: I was actually never thinking that there is something that might be known as art community in Belarus. Let's say, like, a kind of provocation. But for me, the foundation of community is also shared politics. And that was never the case in the art field, which is, again, totally fine.

I think there were, however, all kinds of networks, and they are actually more important for me than communities, because community is something that is coming up more organically in the way how people spend time together, how they work together, and so on and so forth. That's fine. But I think for me that there is no certain community, as I'm sure also in any other context. I think, of course, we are living through more and more crises worldwide—from Ukraine to Palestine—and this is the case not only with our field, but with any other field, that people are getting exhausted, and people are getting tired, and people are getting frustrated. And in Belarus, for many of the reasons that Antonina already said, but

maybe here, I would also like to mention, because it's also exactly about the question of solidarity, and Belarus was always this case of, like, really very low level of visibility in general for many different historical reasons.

And I'm not going there, but I think one part of this frustration and exhaustion is actually also lack of any kind of infrastructural support, solidarity, and care for this artist. We can also see, like, some part of the people who've been active before, during, and after the uprising, they've somehow already settled up in some different context, and it's also helped them to go through it. But most artists, for instance, but also curators, had to move without any preparation, without anything, basically, like, without sometimes knowing the language of the countries where they would move in, without a specific network. And we had, like, a very brief moment of time that some of the support was possible, like some residences, some exhibitions, but since long time, that support and that attention long gone.

So I believe that this is also part of this —for many people's life becomes struggle for survival. They need to earn, they need to study, they need to search for basic needs, such as documents, papers, visas, food, work, and so on and so forth. So, of course, it creates a very unstable situation for continuing to organize. Why does this happen? It's also another conversation.

But I think it's something that would be known as Belarusian, I don't know, art field, art community. It lost its traction, but again, not only for internal reasons, but also for external reasons. But I think that now, since a couple of years, I also would rather like to see it again, not through these notions of failures, but for me, it's a moment of kind of two things.

First of it is something that Antonina also already mentioned - of contradictions, but I believe also healthy contradictions and articulation of your own politics, also the ways of how to be in solidarity with someone and with which means. But again, it's kind of a constant debate of people who have been sharing the common space in 2020–21. But now, of course, there are many, many contradictions. But again, I think it resonates to a certain degree also to the way how, for example, Ukraine, like in a very specific art field, would have very different visions, very different ideas, very different politics. And it’s fine, in that respect. But I think what I aspire from this field is that these debates and sometimes fights also can be helpful. Of course, they can be toxic too.

But the second thing, which I think is actually extremely important, and I'm not sure now, probably someone was using this metaphor or maybe just came to my mind. I would like to see what is happening in Belarus now like, it's basically this kind of burning swamps, a burning box, which you can't really see from the outside, but there is still a lot going on inside. And in one second or in one minute, it can change very, very quickly and very much. So, for me, this time is like a little bit of school time, as I can say, and I'm referencing directly to many and different projects which have been artists or curators in Belarus, which are actually not specifically focusing on Belarus, but having Belarus in their research interest as a kind of highlight, but also trying to open up these perspectives and sees again, thanks Antonina, Belarus in a much broader context of imperialism, of colonization, also like all kinds of decolonial practices.

And here, for example, I'm referring to the School of Algorithmic Solidarity [3], which was organized by artistic group EFFF, which runs kind of in sporadic ways, but also Грыбніца (Mycelium) [4], the kind of educational initiatives that Antonina organized with a kind of generation of artists and curators who actually, some of them had to move straight away from Belarus. Some of them were kind of rooted. And I think this is something which is extremely important. And I'm happy that people again have some time for conversations, for thinking, for research, and kind of putting themselves into a kind of broader perspective. And there are also some more initiatives of this kind, public and non-public. And the legacy of organization in 2020 is something that I think, like, is really important.

And we can also again go into many, many more details and into ways how things were organized. But of course, we also see failures of those infrastructures. Some of the bigger projects of collecting intelligence data were also very much criticized for not keeping the safety of the people who are still in Belarus and who are submitting this data, just to give one example. So of course, it's a dynamic field in a way. And this is a lot for me about learning and what is maybe even more important—of unlearning, in a way.

And I am curious, maybe we can also quickly discuss, and I feel it's somehow important too. We had a conversation recently with a colleague and friend of mine, with Uladzimir Hramovich [5], and we were discussing again, like, very, very few exhibitions, which are kind of focused on Belarus, curated by curators from Belarus or maybe someone else.

But with artists from Belarus in this kind of very much Belarus-focused exhibitions. And I was telling that for me, this exhibition in Kyiv that we co-curated with Antonina and with more colleagues — Every Day: Art Solidarity Resistance [6] — for my perspective was one of these exhibitions which I would not do in some other context because it was exactly focused on one particular national geography. And I still believe that it was very important, and I'm very glad that we managed to do it also, like, in quite complicated conditions. And he was asking me, but yeah, like, that's fine. But, have you seen any of these kinds of exhibitions until now? Even of course the exhibition in Kyiv was huge, but like, we really have very, very few exhibitions everywhere, which would be initiated somehow to remember this legacy or also, like, see struggles of people outside. And then he asked me, like, but have you actually been invited to anywhere to do something, whatever, like Belarus-related?

And I was like, actually, no. So this is also interesting for me, paradox of like, how to maintain in our practices this balance and this, like, contradiction of not being wanted to, for being kind of put into one box, but at the same time still having space for researching, or also kind of trying to make more complex exhibitions, that would involve not only contemporary positions, but historical ones. And as we know, so many historical works were also displaced from collections from Belarus to Russia, which is again part of this colonial system and so on and so forth. So I'm also, like, maybe just dropping it out.

Actually, I'm curious to hear what Antonina, how do you feel about this kind of exhibitions, and what do you think is happening to that respect now?

Antonina Stebur: I totally agree that I couldn't imagine the exhibition Every Day in another context. Moreover, it was somehow the intention of solidarity, because I remember that Mystetskiy Arsenal would like to somehow support the Belarusian protest and to show Belarusian art.

And I couldn't imagine it not only because of the context and the relationship between Kyiv and Minsk, or between Belarus and Ukraine, but at the same time, the particular institution and the particular team who would like somehow to provide the space for this art. And they gave us almost total freedom for our expression and for our conception, because they thought it was a small exhibition, and after all, it became a huge exhibition.

But I completely agree with Aleksei that, of course, there are exhibitions about Belarusian art in Poland, in Germany, and in other geographies.

But, frankly speaking, today we talk about a very contradictory term. Solidarity is contradictory, but contemporary art is also a contradictory term. In my opinion, contemporary art all the time tries to overcome itself, its limits, but at the same time, the very term “contemporary art” is a colonial term. Contemporary means something that includes and excludes modernity. And this is also more from an institutional point of view. Contemporary art is not only a colonial term, but at the same time, a very capitalistic term. It means that the reason why there are not so many exhibitions of Belarusian art is not that we don't have art at all.

But, as Aleksei said, a lot of art pieces are located in Russia. Some of them are located in Belarus, and we couldn't show them. But at the same time, because we don't have infrastructure or an institutional way to support this exhibition, this is also the reason — very, very material and very bureaucratic at the same time. But what is important for me, I'm still not sure that the idea of a show of “pure Belarusian art” is a good idea.

The reason is that Belarusian art had a very complicated context, and frankly speaking, for most of the artists we couldn't identify who is who — is it Belarusian artists or not, and by what criteria do we define them? Probably it's better to show Belarusian art in a wider context, to show complexity, and to show this discredit, I don't know, something like that.

Asia Tsisar: Let me clarify something. So, this exhibition Every Day in Mystetskyi Arsenál in Kyiv — it was also an exhibition, let's say, on the occasion of the protests, right?

Aleksei Borisionok: No, it was not on the occasion of the protests, just in the midst of the protests. So we started to work, I think, in October, November 2020, and that was the moment when everything was changing every day.

Asia Tsisar: So you mean that the invitation to create this exhibition wasn't related to the protests, or…

Antonina Stebur: It was, but it was not, let's say, it was not in the aftermath of the protest. It was still ongoing, and no one could know what actually could happen.

Asia Tsisar: Okay. Can we try to track a little bit what makes this exhibition so different from those we were so critical about before?

Aleksei Borisionok: Well, I don't know, like, I don't have an easy answer to that. I don't think it's very separate from the body of all other exhibitions. For example, this exhibition is a part of the history of exhibitions which were connected to the uprising in Belarus or to the aftermath of the uprising. Definitely, we can see it as a part.

What was particular about this exhibition? The first thing was that it was also curated by quite a big collective of six people. Most of them, like the two of us, Antonina and I, we are coming more from a curatorial background, and the rest of the people — Marina Naprushkina, Andrei Dureika, Maxim Tyminko, Sergei Shabohin — are visual artists [7]. And we were thinking about this exhibition as a kind of assembly of different voices.

So, for example, I believe that again, like many of the artists who were part of that exhibition, they would not agree on many different aspects of political or cultural life in general. They would come from very different visual and political traditions, which was fine with us. That was an idea also to put this kind of polyphony of different voices into one space.

And thanks to Arsenal, that was a welcoming space. It was a big space to host quite many different positions. What was specific about that exhibition also was the fact that it was kind of trying to narrate the space between visual arts and social movements, not only connected to 2020, but also trying to see a set of different historical developments that brought us to this situation.

And that included not only historical artworks or reenactments of historical artworks, but also different historical—in that situation, mostly kind of visual culture, photography, and documentation of different political events that were happening basically from the late 80s, which was one of the situations which brought us to the point where we are now.

So, to some respect, one can say that the scale was particular because I think that basically, it was one of the biggest exhibitions of this kind, like at least in this last five years or so. And that scale, which I'm not giving comment on in a way, but it's still—it provided for more people to be included, both exhibition-wise and public-program-wise.

And I believe that was, for many people, an important exhibition because it was, again, for many people, also the time that they had to move the country, and the institution was also helping them to actually go through this process through Ukraine.

And yeah, I don't know, maybe Antonina, you want to add something about that question?

Antonina Stebur: I agree with Alexey, especially about quite big group of curators who have sometimes very different approaches to what art is or what art could be, and this provoked a huge conversation. And of course, I agree that we are not focused only on 2020, but at the same time, we couldn't ignore the protests of 2020–2021.

And it was quite an interesting situation that we navigated through our curatorial practices. As well as almost all artists who were involved in our exhibition, who at the same time were also artists during the protest. And we were in the middle of very intensive historical events. The situation was very intense during our preparation, because you can imagine that a huge exhibition takes time; it's not just a week or a month.

And the intensification of events changed several times. We were not focusing only on 2020–2021, but we were in the middle of these events. And this was our standpoint from which we observed and created the exhibition. I'm totally sure that if the same curators gathered together in the same space now, it would be a completely different exhibition.

Aleksei Borisionok: I'm laughing because I think that was again like this kind of healthy contradiction. I mean, of course, I'm laughing, I'm joking about that, but I'm saying that it's maybe like one of the few ways I can imagine that the exhibition can kind of embrace the contradiction in itself, then to try to present some very, very consistent art history of Belarus or something like that.

Antonina Stebur: Yeah, but I really like that this exhibition wasn't really stable. We were in a very intensive situation, and the exhibition also was very intensive, to my mind. I really like this term from Olia Soslovskaya [8]. The notion of time and temporality was very important. It's like the future perfect continues, as something that has already happened, continues now, and will happen in the future. And this temporality was very important for us.

Asia Tsisar: If I would try somehow to sum up why this exhibition was important from the point of view of the Ukrainian art process, I would say, first of all, for me, it was a very bold move to overcome the colonial pattern of cooperation between Ukraine and Belarus. So, on one hand, we have this widespread imaginary that we are so connected, while in reality, all those connections and most of the knowledge that we have about each other goes through Russia, who created this colonial structure. And the existence of the Every Day exhibition in such an important and, let's also be honest, governmental institution as Mystetskyi Arsenal—it is an art institution of national status—was an important gesture to show that, actually, no, we don't need this unnecessary mediator. We can directly speak to each other, and we can basically establish our own rules on how we want to be connected.

And also, another thing which I believe is very important is that this exhibition was a big step for in-person introduction of Ukrainian and Belarusian communities to each other. Since a lot of protesters moved to Ukraine, and Kyiv especially, such an exhibition could have been a great pretext for future collaboration and smoother—I wouldn't say integration, but entrance—of Belarusian artists to the Ukrainian art scene.

And of course, all those good efforts were unfortunately interrupted by the full-scale invasion, and most of Belarusian artists and cultural professionals left Ukraine because of the war, and basically experienced forced migration twice within a very short period of time.

But apart from all of the bad things that happened, I know at least one initiative that was able to overcome these circumstances, and this is the project called Senses of Safety, organized by representatives of the Belarusian art community in exile - I mean, Anti-war Coalition [9]. And Antonina, you created this project together with Tatiana Kochubinska [10] and Marina Koneva [11].

Just to provide a small context, Senses of Safety is the first international exhibition organized in Kharkiv since the beginning of full-scale invasion. And Kharkiv is the second biggest city of Ukraine. It's a very important place for the history of culture and arts. But this place also faced a sort of cultural isolation with the beginning of invasion, since it is situated very close to the front line. And war made this place extremely dangerous to live, and most of the artists and cultural professionals fled the city. Most of the institutions remained closed. Despite everything, culture still flourished inside the city, but it's hard to deny that relations with the outside world were drastically cut by war. There were a lot of projects about Kharkiv somewhere abroad to, you know, as we say, raise the awareness, increase visibility, and so on.

But Senses of Safety was actually the first project that took something from outside and brought it to the city and did something, I believe, very important for those who still remain in Kharkiv.

Antonina Stebur: Thank you, that you’ve mentioned this important exhibition for me as well. But this exhibition would never have happened without the Yermilov Center and without Natalia Ivanova, because several years ago we called her and asked, “What help do you really need?” And probably the exhibition is the last thing that you need in Kharkiv. And she answered, “No, no, no, no, no exhibition, that’s something that we really need.”

And in this situation, we curated as a help, like “curare”, because the idea was created by Natalia, but the concept, the topic of the exhibition was created by Maryna Koneva. Maryna lives in Kharkiv. It’s important because she was in Kharkiv all the time, and she was the main voice from our side, because we couldn’t propose the topic as people from outside. And for me, this exhibition was very important.

For example, I really like the artworks by Andreas Angelidakis [12]. I really like his approach to queering architecture. He worked with ruins, but these ruins are soft because they’re made not of concrete or marble, but of textile.

And it looks like furniture. You can use it as furniture. When he heard that Yermilov Center is not only a contemporary art center, but also a shelter, and that people lived there for two months at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he proposed his largest installation not as art pieces, but as furniture for sitting, lying, for people spending their time during the bombing. And I think this is how we can reimagine art. This is not about art, but something else.

Asia Tsisar: But also, with this project you tried to link Kharkiv to many other institutions and places around the globe, and you basically made an open invitation to kind of all art institutions to join the collateral program.

Antonina Stebur: Yeah, it's true, because it was, frankly speaking, quite a wide project, the exhibition in Kharkiv was the core of the whole project, but it’s also connected to different events inside the city and outside as well, in different cities, in different countries.

Some were more spectacular, for example, mapping on the Karlsruhe Schloss castle on the first of September. This is like Antiwar Days, and for us it was crucial to be part of this.

Some of them were almost invisible. We tried to connect, for example, knowledge production and colonial tension, because Kharkiv is also an important scientific center, not only a cultural and artistic center.

And all the time I think about extractivistic practices and how people on the ground are tied to these extractivistic practices. And of course, when in Kharkiv we saw the research institute who created the special crystals used by the Hadron Collider, it was a very, very interesting situation. Could you imagine this collider, this super clean, super abstract knowledge about how our universe was created and circumstances where these crystals were produced in Kharkiv during the bombing, when all the scientists and their families were moved around the crystals.

Because these crystals are very sensitive to energy and electricity. When the disturbance of electricity happens, it means that these crystals ruin and they cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of euros.

And their bodies suffer from the war, and they are carrying these crystals that should be part of this super-posh science, and a large Hadron Collider has Russian scientists iin their team, and they are out of politics. But when you understand this chain of knowledge production and the crystals production, you can imagine that nothing can be out of politics and full-scale invasion.

And that's why discussion of knowledge production and the connection between knowledge and war was very important as well. So we tried to find the balance between different scales, like spectacular, non-spectacular, just discursive and visual. Thank you for mentioning this. For me, it was very important and is still not a project, but an artistic organism.

Asia Tsisar: To sum up this conversation, I think I want to ask both of you about your curatorial approach and your vision of solidarity. How do you merge it, and how do you implement what you believe solidarity is in your projects?

Antonina Stebur: In the beginning of our conversation, I have already said that we are probably together in this podcast because we generally believe in solidarity. But at the same time, we try to criticize our approach, and my own approach also changes all the time. For example, what I thought about solidarity 10 years ago—there are also… I feel some shifts. And I think that is really great is that I don't think about solidarity as an stable term, but I try to overcome it all the time or just practice it. And frankly speaking, as a curator, I prefer a more collective curatorial approach.

Because a curator can also be a figure of power, and when we're curating together—just the two of us or a big collective—it helps us to bring together different points of view, some tension, but at the same time, a lot of joy of communication as well. And it helps to widen our understanding of the topic and see different angles. And this is also about solidarity, but solidarity as collaboration.

I have never reflected, to be honest, on my practice, and I have never written my curatorial statement or anything like that. But I noticed that from exhibition to exhibition, I try to find ways to use art facilities in a completely different way. The exhibition is also important, but at the same time, for me, it's important to create something beyond the exhibition. I don't know—as I mentioned about Andreas Angelidakis, who gave furniture to use not as art pieces, but as sofas or chairs for people who just needed to be in this shelter. It's a very simple situation, but the institution also has a lot of limits and a lot of rules, and I truly believe that the role of the curator is somehow to overcome these limits.

I remember Marina Naprushkina—she is a Belarusian artist, and she was also one of the co-curators of our exhibition Every Day—and she said why she finished with the White Cube exhibition and moved to purely activist artwork. And she said that very often contemporary art pretends to be open-minded and inclusive, but frankly speaking, many people couldn't feel the contemporary art museum or gallery as a hospitable place. They don't feel like this place is for them. But at the same time, a lot of contemporary exhibitions somehow declare that they break the rules to create a more inclusive space. And we should all the time think about how we can invite people who don't feel that the space is for them.

Aleksei Borisionok: I would maybe contribute one notion with which I have been working over the past couple of years, maybe to summarize this conversation in a way, and maybe just give a few more hints on what I think about this notion of solidarity, which is again, very, very controversial.

And this is the notion of grafting, which is a very particular procedure known for transplanting different plant bodies of different species into each other.

That was something that we decided to work with, following a certain criteria and methodology, with my colleague Katalin Erdődi [13], for Matter of Art Biennial [14] in Prague organized by tranzit [15], which happened last year, in 2024. For both of us, coming with interests into different fields, I think this divide is again very interesting for our conversations about solidarity, because the divide that we were addressing in that biennial exhibition, publication, and public program directly referred to the so-called urban-rural divide. Of course, it's also a very different set of ideas about how people in larger cities live in contrast to the majority of the world’s population is actualy rural. Anyway, that’s again a longer story.

But we thought that this notion of grafting, which is again a kind of a leaving contradiction for many reasons—and one of those being that it is also known as part of indigenous agricultural practices at the same time, it is very well connected to all kinds of eugenical and selection discourses.

But what we thought was interesting is that grafting can be facilitated by a person (there are also different ways of natural grafting), and it can be successful, but it can also fail. It can strengthen the plants and make them more resilient, but at the same time, it can also lead to different forms of intoxication and alienation from each other.

We were slightly trying to see what happens if we use this term of grafting and apply it to the rural-urban divide, thinking about different ways one can be in solidarity with another.

And again, I think it’s not only about human solidarity, but actually it’s much larger. This is why I was also mentioning solidarity as a kind of anarchist anthology of life for me. And again, it very much depends on what you’re doing and in which context.

The Biennial was organized by a small organization, but the space belonged to the National Gallery of Art in Prague. The gallery already had quite a bad reputation for the way they treated pro-Palestinian activists back then.

With our small organization, we had a certain leverage, a certain potential to navigate these institutional complexities, still collaborate, and work in a space that was already hostile to activists, but also include them. We could fail. We could be more successful in bringing more attention to Palestine back then. I think it worked out well in different ways, but there is no guarantee that it would be successful.

So that’s why maybe I would like to finish here, and this notion of grafting can be somewhat helpful—or maybe it’s very poetic again. It’s not a practical reading of whatever we do or how good our intentions are.

Solidarity is not something concrete. As Antonina said, it always needs practice. It always needs lived experience. And it needs to see, I think, the basic political foundations of organization, because otherwise it just becomes empathy or goodwill, which does not necessarily do what we anticipate for someone who is in solidarity or who needs this solidarity.