Warsaw to Host Exhibition “What We Talk About When We Talk About Crimea”

On March 20, the exhibition “What We Talk About When We Talk About Crimea” featuring works by Ukrainian artists will open at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Organizers announced the event.

According to them, the exhibition aims to tell the world about Crimea through the creativity of Ukrainian artists, including those of Crimean Tatar origin. The displays will depict personal and cultural losses following Russia’s temporary occupation of the peninsula in 2014, which marked the start of the war against Ukraine. The project raises questions about what Ukraine, Europe, and the world will look like tomorrow, and what they stand to lose if they fail to truly see Crimea. This was reported by LB.ua.

The exhibition is organized by the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art on behalf of the Ukrainian Institute, with support from the “Partnership for a Strong Ukraine” program.

“Through this exhibition, we want to share the sense of rupture and loss that Ukraine experiences due to the temporary occupation of Crimea, and to highlight the peninsula’s uniqueness as a gateway between civilizations, which ultimately provides a key to understanding Ukraine’s cultural phenomenon,” say curators Oksana Dovhopolova and Kateryna Semeniuk.

The artists draw on their long-standing personal memories, reflect on Crimean Tatar identity after losing their homes, and explore themes of resistance and the defense of their native land.

“This exhibition is not only about the temporarily lost peninsula, but also about its heart: its people, the contemporary Crimean Tatar culture that pulses and breaks through artificial borders, and the hope for its return,” emphasizes co-curator of the exhibition and Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute, Alim Aliyev.

The exhibition will feature works in various genres — from graphics and painting to kinetic sculpture and digital simulation — by Oleksii Borysov, Yuriy Yefanov, Emine Ziyatdin, Vlodko Kaufman, Vitaliy Kokhan, Pavlo Makov, Roman Mykhailov, Sevilâ Nariman-qızı, Rustem Skibin, Oleh Tistol, Khalil Khalilov, Anton Shebetko, and Elmira Shemsedinova. The exhibition design was created by Oleksandr Burlaka.

The exhibition will run until June 28 at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.