Cultural Luggage delves into the deep and sometimes painful ties between Poland and Ukraine, from the 14th-16th centuries, when Ukraine was under the rule of Poland and Lithuania, up through the Cossak Uprising of the 17th century and a bitter war that last decades, Ukraine's defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War that resulted in the ceding of western parts of Ukraine to Poland in the 20th century. The Ukrainian population in the Galician region of Poland was repressed for years up until the Nazi invasion, which embroiled both nations in a struggle for independence. Following the hardships of the communist state and the cold war, the democratic triumph in Poland and Ukraine in 1989 and 1991, respectively, has progressively brought the countries closer together and closer to Europe. Poland and Ukraine also share an artistic heritage, with frescoes painted by Kiev artists gracing the walls of the Holy Trinity Chapel in the royal castle in Lublin. The exhibition at the National Museum in Kiev, curated by Mykola Skyba, is based on new models of understanding and interpreting the history of art in a national context, while taking a new look at the role of the museum in creating a social context for the artistic process.
This show inscribes itself into the museum's attempts to evolve a new way of spectatorship in the field of art, based on the "legitimisation of contemporary art (which, by its very nature, goes beyond the boundaries of traditional notions of classical art, its aesthetic categories and clear division of sculpture, painting, graphics) through it presentation in a museum", while also maintaining a focus on the recording, archiving, preservation and presentation of works in a permanent collection, according to Skyba. Major works of art from the collection of the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle (CCA) and the Zachęta National Galleries are presented alongside works from the Ukrainian Museum collection, dated from the Baroque period of the 15th-18th centuries, when Ukraine's Baroque traditions were exceptionally strong. On the other hand, Poland's place in the realm of Contemporary Art, particularly in the 1980s, brought many important works to the global art scene. The exhibition presents an alter ego of sorts through the conceptual presence of Poland, suggesting an alternate personality for the Ukrainian spirit based on the similarities and differences between the two nations. The exhibition comprises the broadest survey of Polish art in Poland in history.
Featured artists at Cultural Luggage include: Andrzej Dłużniewski, Roman Opałka, Włodzimierz Borowski, Stanisław Dróżdż, Zuzanna Janin, Zofia Kulik, Jarosław Kozłowski, Krzysztof M. Bednarski and Leon Tarasewicz.
Double Game presents a showcase of young Polish art as part of the 1st Kiev International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Kiev, from exhibitions, performances, concerts and discussions. Poland was granted a 5,000-sqm space within the grandiose 60,000 sqm expanse of the historic Kiev Arsenal - today among the largest exhibition spaces in Europe. Poland's Centrala design group (Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis) partnered up with Ukraine's Objects Group collective to create an architectural space for housing the Polish collection, meant to mimic the form of a rampart - which can either be interpreted according to its connotations as a defense strategy and the legacy of such structures, which function simply as places to "hang out" for young people.
The Polish showcase at the Arsenal was initiated by CCA director Fabio Cavalluci, who cooperated with curators Marek Goździewski, Kaja Pawełek, Andrzej Załęski and Alexander Solovyov in selecting works that fit in with the Biennale theme: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times - Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art. According to Olexander Soloviov, "the exhibition allows for such the presentation on such a large scale for the very first time the experiences of neighbouring nations through art, which share a common history, but have been separated by geo-political boundaries. His aim is to create a kind of portal to the Arsenal space, creating a spontaneous, unpredictable showcase of close to 50 works, many of them new, as Polish and Ukrainian artists rally together at what has been called by some critics "the first football biennale", giving a broader cultural context to Euro 2012. The "game" at the Arsenal plays with artistic expectations, notions of contemporary art, relations between artists and society, politics and media - giving way to a cultural dialogue that may well lead to answers to certain questions.