PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015 exhibition: 16 shortlisted artists / Carlos Motta: Patriots, Citizens, Lovers…

The PinchukArtCentre presents the exhibition of 16 shortlisted artists for the fourth edition of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015, a nationwide prize for Ukrainian artists up to 35, which coincides with Carlos Motta: Patriots, Citizens, Lovers…, a solo exhibition by one of the Future Generation Art Prize 2014 Main Award winners Carlos Motta.

Kyiv based PinchukArtCentre Prize presents new works by 16 emerging Ukrainian artists. Each work is especially produced for the exhibition and forms an independent artistic statement. Combined the works give an insight into themes, concerns and new artistic tendencies of a young generation of artists confronted with life in a country in distress.

The 16 nominees were shortlisted by an independent Selection Committee from about 800 applicants and include: Yevgenia Belorusets, Daniil Galkin, Mykola Karabinovych, Alina Kleitman, Daria Koltsova, Kinder Album, Sergii Melnychenko, Roman Mykhailov, Sergiy Petlyuk, Mykola Ridnyi, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Sergiy Yakimenko, Kateryna Yermolaeva, Anna Zvyagintseva, Melnychuk-Burlaka Group, and Open Group.

The winners of the prize will be announced by the international jury at the award ceremony in December 2015 in Kyiv. The winner of the Main Prize will be automatically included in the short list of the Future Generation Art Prize 2016.

The exhibition is curated by Tatiana Kochubinska, Junior Curator, PinchukArtCentre.

Carlos Motta: Patriots, Citizens, Lovers…, will premiere the artist’s Future Generation Art Prize-commissioned installation Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… (2015) in dialogue with his celebrated multi-media installation We Who Feel Differently (2012). Produced with funds from the Future Generation Art Prize, Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… (2015) was developed in conversation with Ukrainian journalist Maxim Ivanukha and is composed of ten urgent interviews with Ukrainian LGBTI and queer activists who discuss the critical and dire situation of lesbian, gay, trans and intersex lives in Ukraine in times of a war.

Confronted with innumerable challenges, Ukrainian LGBTI citizens are vulnerable targets of a violent homophobic rhetoric and remain largely under-recognized in a context that deems sexual and gender issues minor in light of the serious Ukrainian economic and political crisis. Social invisibility, physical and psychological abuse, political violence, and a deeply patriarchal culture frame the context for the difficult work of LGBTI activists who denounce discrimination and demand the transformation of the system.

Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… (2015) features testimonies by Alexander Zinchenkov, Anonymous, Anatoliy Yerema, Maxim Eristavi, Nina Verbytskaya, Olena Shevchenko, Oksana, Yuriy Frank, Yuri Yoursky and Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk. These 11 courageous Ukrainians relentless activism greatly contributes to the formation of a new and democratic post-Revolution of Dignity Ukraine.

As a way of providing a historical and wider global context around queer discourses and culture for the Ukrainian public, the exhibition also presents Motta’s installation We Who Feel Differently (2012), which includes thorough conversations with American, Colombian, Norwegian and South Korean LGBTI and queer academics, activists, artists, lawyers, medical doctors and others, about the development of international sexual of gender politics in the last years.

In 2016 the work of Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) will be presented in various solo exhibitions at MALBA—Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires and Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami.

The exhibition is curated by Björn Geldhof, Deputy Artistic Director, PinchukArtCentre.

Media enquiries:
T +38 044 494 1148 / press [​at​] pinchukartcentre.org

General enquiries:
T +38 044 590 0858 / info [​at​] pinchukartcentre.org