Polish Pavilion, Poland at Venice Biennale of Art - Giardini, Castello - City of Venice
(Photo: Archie Moore / kith and kin 2024 / Poland Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / Photographer: Andrea Rossetti / © the artist / Image courtesy of the artist and The Commercial)
Exhibition in progress from April 20th to November 26th 2024
The 60th Biennale Arte will open to the public on April 20. But on the 17th, 18th and 19th there will be the various events and collateral events that always enliven
suddenly Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place the day of opening to the public.
The title of the 60th edition of the Art Biennale is Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners Everywhere.
The exhibition will be divided into between the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and the Arsenale, including 213 artists from 88 nations. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 works and objects on display, 80 new productions.
Go to the page of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
Curator of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
The 2024 edition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
– Adriano Pedrosa (born 1965) is a Brazilian curator. He is the artistic director of the São Paulo Art Museum (MASP) and the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Go to the page of the 60th Venice Art Biennale
Polish Pavilion, Poland at 60th Biennale Arte of Venice
The title of the exhibition at the Polish Pavilion is Repeat after Me II.
Artists: Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga, Marta Czyż.
Curator: Marta Czyż.
Commissioner: Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Seat: Padiglione Polonia, Quarta Tesa (Arsenale) - Venezia
Press Release of Polish Pavilion
Repeat after Me II is an installation by the Ukrainian
Open Group collective, made up of two films. These
videos were created in 2022 and 2024. All the people
they feature are refugees, speaking of their war
experiences through the sounds of weapons they
recall, then encouraging the audience to follow their
lead. The artist use the karaoke format. Yet here the
accompaniment is not hit songs, but shots, missiles,
howling and explosions, and the lyrics are descriptions
of deadly weapons. This is the soundtrack of a war.
The juxtaposition of these works from 2022 and
2024 shows the drastic continuity of memory, as well
as the changes in war technology. The first video was
shot in a camp near Lviv for people resettled within the
country. The second work was made outside of Ukraine,
in the countries of Western Europe, which are a haven
for the participants. Yet even now, beyond the reach of
the endless sirens, the sounds of war remain part of
their trauma and symbolically spread their range.
The audience can repeat the sounds of the weapons
after the witnesses, learning the language of their
experiences, or step back into the safe space designed
to look like a karaoke bar. Yet this is no ordinary bar, it
is a karaoke instruction site for a military future that
threatens all of us.
A few weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
the Strategic Communications and Security Information
Centre of the Ministry of Culture and Information
Politics began distributing brochures called In Case
of Emergency or War, explaining how to behave in a
war zone. The instructions vary depending on whether
the attack in question is automatic rifle fire, artillery
shelling, rocket launchers, or an air raid. The ability to
tell between them can save your life. Repeat after Me II
portrays war as a collective experience — crossing age,
ethnicity, professional and social status — giving the
floor to witnesses and calling attention to the individual
experiences of catastrophe.
The caretaker of the Polish Pavilion and organiser
of the exhibition at the 60th International Art Exhibition
— La Biennale di Venezia is Zachęta — National Gallery
of Art. Poland has participated in the International Art
Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with its own pavilion
since 1932.
Оpen Group was founded in August 2012 in Lviv by six
Ukrainian artists: Yuriy Biley (2012–present), Pavlo Kovach
(2012–present), Oleg Perkovskiy (2012–2013), Yevgen
Samborskiy (2012–2014), Stanislav Turina (2012–2019)
and Anton Varga (2012–present). The group’s structure
has changed over the years. Its present members are:
Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga.
The structure of Open Group is built around the idea
of collective work, involving people from different fields for
a period of time to work on collaborative projects. Their
work is based on exploring interactions between people
and contextual spaces, creating ‘open situations’.
The group’s members have run independent art
spaces, such as Detenpyla Gallery (since 2011) or
Еfremova26 Gallery (2013–2014) in Lviv.
Open Group won the Special Distinction at the
PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2013, and the Main Prize in
2015. Their works were featured at the Ukrainian Pavilion
at the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice. In 2016,
Open Group curated a show called Dependence Degree,
Collective Practices of Young Ukrainian Artists 2000–2016
at the BWA Awangarda Gallery (Wrocław, Poland).
In 2017, their work was presented as part of the
Future Generation Art Prize@Venice 2017 (an event to
accompany the 57th Biennale). In 2019, Open Group
curated the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 58th International
Art Exhibition in Venice.
Open Group’s works have been exhibited by such
institutions as the 8th Yokohama Triennale; Albertinum,
Dresden; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Badischer
Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; National Art Museum of Ukraine,
Kyiv; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (Netherlands);
Belvedere 21 Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna;
Labirynt Gallery, Lublin (Poland); Miguel Abreu Gallery,
New York; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv; Jam Factory Art
Center, Lviv (Ukraine); 4th Autostrada Biennale, Prizren
(Kosovo); The School of Kyiv — Kyiv Biennial 2015; Ars Aevi
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo.
The artists’ works are held in the collections of the
KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; Ars Aevi Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sarajevo; MOCA NGO/Ukrainian
Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA), Kyiv; National Art
Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv; Museum of Contemporary Art in
Kherson (Ukraine); and in private collections
Useful information for the visit
Hours:
Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except April 22, June 17, July 22, September 2, September 30, October 31, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.2728329
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale
of Venice |
