The exhibition “A Space of One’s Own” at PinchukArtCentre lasted for over two months, curated by Tetiana Kochubinska and Tetiana Zhmurko. Despite the sufficient duration of its display, the exhibition remains insufficiently reflected upon. Probably for many reasons, quite obvious within the Ukrainian artistic context.

From the very beginning, a pervasive caution is read in the accompanying text of the exhibition. The curators seem to deliberately smooth over uncomfortable political angles, avoiding the sharpness and importance of the themes raised by the exhibition. The exhibition seems to deliberately separate the political from the bodily, the manifest from the sensual.

The curators handle the feminist critical discourse quite cautiously: they place it within the exhibition’s scope but do not reinforce it. Emphasizing the importance of feminist discourse and its problematic diversity might have helped better understand the overall construction of “A Space of One’s Own.” The project does not provide clear definitions of what this space should be but rather poses questions about what constitutes a zone of comfort, freedom, a place for expression, etc. This project sharply separates the importance of equality between women and men / female and male artists from the main content of the project.

The overall construction of the exhibition makes it quite similar to the “Mouth of the Medusa” exhibition of 1995 (1). Although it has a historical expansion that sometimes conflicts with the accompanying text. The curatorial methodology and position also resemble the experience of Natalia Filonenko, with a rather noticeable non-engagement and detachment in the method. History seems to make a loop. Tamara Zlobina writes: women’s expressions, no matter how qualitative, fall into a conservative context — and the more radical the ideas, the more cleverly they are ignored (2). The exhibition bypasses all feminist projects created in recent years.

“A Space of One’s Own” begins with the recreation of the room of artist Polina Raiko, who covered the walls of her house in Tsyurupynsk (now Oleshky, Kherson region) with paintings. This is a story about still existing and quite persistent social hierarchies in Ukrainian art, with clear definitions: who is an artist and who is not, who is a professional and who is an amateur. Here it is worth emphasizing the question: what would happen to the economic and ideological foundation of the bourgeois art world if this larger mass of excluded practices were also considered art? (3)

To add: what will happen to Ukrainian art if this mass of women from the shadow of history is included in it? Is it possible to develop methods of “inclusion,” and in what way will they truly begin to work? In her 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?“, which gave rise to a whole movement aimed at involving women in art, Linda Nochlin highlights the systematic exclusion of women artists from professional art spheres and suggests that due to its history, the traditional idea of fine art (and its characteristic concept of “genius”) may continue to neglect creative products usually made by women (4).

Through the work-screen, Alina Kopytsia’s “Interior” textile collage, which conditionally separates the first zone of the exhibition, we enter the part designated by the curators as the “intimacy” zone. This zone features works by Maria Prymachenko, Kateryna Bilokur, Maryna Skugaryova, Alina Kleitman, Margarita Zharkova. Maryna Skugaryova’s installation “I Feel Good” (1996) is quite indicative for describing current processes and practices in Ukrainian art.

Here are two remarks:
– In the annotation to the work, we find information about its creation history: “… created in 1996 under the curatorship of Marta Kuzma for the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv.” Later, while exploring the “A Space of One’s Own” exhibition, captions to works also mention “Created on commission by PinchukArtCentre.” What is the role of these institutions in the history of the works’ emergence? Can artistic expressions (works) not be initiated by curatorial conjuncture and institutional funding to pose such important questions in art? How is this related to the material status of cultural workers and the still absent system of payment for their work in Ukraine?

– Besides the aesthetic aspect and the story about the artist’s male environment, the process of creating the work remains undescribed. It was probably accompanied by everyday worries and care for the comfort of the work’s subjects, which may have become an obstacle to the author’s creative realization. This example is characteristic of many Ukrainian female artists, not only from the 1990s, who faced a double burden: caring for the family and professional realization.

The curators point to the everyday nature of the context in which the works are represented, indicating an appeal to patriarchal stereotypes about women and their family duties. It is worth adding that Ukrainian society remains patriarchal, as do the conditions in which women/artists work and live. They remain in the shadow of patriarchal art, institutional/museum exclusion/displacement, and still live in a rather traditionalist and clerical society.

Oksana Chepelyk’s work “Chronicles from Fortinbras” is located in the part of the exhibition that, according to the curators’ concept, tells about the “external,” political space where the defense of basic women’s rights and freedoms for today took place. This work conflicts with the rest of the exposition with its expression. The Soviet part of the narrative grates harshly against the postcolonial surface of this video. Documentary chronicles are mixed with posters of Soviet propaganda from the 1920s–1930s.

Although the language of the works is polar opposite, they still share similar, resonant motifs. The aesthetics are quite similar to the aesthetics of documentary films by Kyivnaukfilm from the 1980s. Chepelyk’s video work was created at a certain stage with Oksana Zabuzhko and appeals to the title of her collection of philosophical essays, which places the work within the postcolonial feminist discourse.

After viewing the work, questions remain: Why is the female body objectified in such a critical expression? Why does the artist, like patriarchal elites implementing the nationalist project, use the female body as an illustration of the nation’s symbol? More precisely — why does she depict Ukraine in this way? Why is there room for manipulations arising from the division into “us” and “them”?

Fanon’s quote aptly describes the paintings from this hall and reproductions of Soviet posters (created by men): “The search for nationalist identity, postcolonial independence, and ethnic authenticity through so-called equality politics in postcolonial strategies ultimately always ends in homophobia, racism, misogyny, and other forms of inequality” (5).

Women’s participation in protests, as in Oksana Pavlenko’s work “Long Live March 8!”, is actively unfolding worldwide and not only on March 8. Women defend positions of general democratic freedoms and principles. Such actions in Ukraine are still attacked with impunity by far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Kyiv, Lviv, Uzhhorod.

Semen Yoffe’s work “Shooting Club (At the Shooting Range)” is accompanied by the following comment: “This painting shows how women’s emancipation occurred in the 1920s–1930s. Mostly, it was realized at the cost of their masculinization: in all physical parameters, a woman was equated to a man, which concerned work in production, participation in combat actions, and social life, etc.”

The authors of the text should have considered important historical events accompanying these emancipation processes and their essence. Equality in rights and freedoms is not always about masculinization but about women gaining these rights. There are still hundreds of professions forbidden to women worldwide. Equal access to all professions has had and continues to have special significance.

The story of women’s militarization has been repeated many times and will continue to be repeated in history; this is not related to masculinization but rather poses a risk to freedom. R. Claire Snyder notes: “The project of civic militarism has the capacity to generate a set of egalitarian, civic virtues such as freedom, equality, the common good, civic participation, a sense of community, cooperation, and dedication” (6). There are many examples of military women’s self-organization, such as Mujeres Libres — an anarchist women’s organization during the Second Spanish Republic. Their activity was based on the idea of “double struggle” — the fight for equality and social revolution (7). For example, members of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), who are currently fighting in Syria (8). This also concerns women in the Ukrainian armed forces, who only recently gained the same rights as men at the legislative level (9), and that only after 27 years of the armed forces’ existence. Women’s militarization is a rather complex and controversial topic, like anything related to violence and forms of resistance to it.

Alevtina Kahidze’s video performance “44” geographically goes beyond the context indicated in the accompanying text: “In this work, the artist raises the issue of reproductive violence in contemporary Ukrainian society. Is childbirth always a woman’s choice, or is it a traditional perception of a woman’s function as purely reproductive? Analyzing society, stereotypes within it, and speculations about childbirth, Kahidze gives space for reflection on moral violence, asserting one’s choice, and personal responsibility” — this also concerns general trends in Central and Eastern Europe. The politics of these countries are actively returning to anti-abortion initiatives and “protection of family values.” Alevtina’s contextual graphic paintings ironically continue her performative narrative. This allows viewers to consider situations in a broader context, where the main question posed to women in these two works is: “Do you have children?” The size of the paintings helps them dissolve in the space where they appear: the stairs as a transit zone in the exhibition help make them semi-visible but with clear accents, illustrative, with sharp expression.

The hall dedicated to monumental art of Soviet Ukraine initially seems quite conceptually distant from the conditional three spaces. Perhaps that is why they are conditional, although by its internal logic, this hall could be a continuation of the “external”/political space, where ideological art and its author appear.

Zhanna Kadyrova’s works have many layers of meaning. I emphasize, for example, the quite interesting method of documenting ruins that permanently appear in the post-Soviet reality. One can also notice sentiments for Soviet design of public and private spaces, which was quite restrained in form and materials used. Today, all this has drowned in the chaos of private improvements and the pervasive capitalist use of public space. Kadyrova’s objects gain new historical value: they are carriers of memory of Soviet production and everyday culture.

This exhibition is important, although it could have conveyed a more powerful feminist expression, strengthening it. The curatorial method of Tetiana Kochubinska and Tetiana Zhmurko in this project well reflects the specifics of the Ukrainian artistic context, which is quite firmly stuck in uncertainty, unspokenness, fragmentation, patriarchy, and its consequences.

This project had the opportunity to express problems of women quite broadly, accessibly, and clearly, but it continues to isolate this topic as some temporary place in the patriarchal world, a separate place in a country that still has not ratified the Istanbul Convention and repeatedly returns to political guardianship over “family values.”

The exhibition should end with a game developed by artist Valentina Petrova. “Yes or No” is a kind of quest through the exposition, aimed at helping visitors look at the exhibition and its issues critically, through the prism of feminism — or not. This is one of the possible compensations for the curators, a brief moment of precise focusing of the optics of this project, an opportunity to give it important clarity.

Linda Hutcheon emphasizes: any discourse that cannot take sexual difference into account in its expression and address will within the patriarchal order certainly be an indifferent/neutral reflection of male dominance.

Notes:

1. http://www.korydor.in.ua/ua/context/rot-meduzy-pershi-sproby-feministichnyh-vistavok.html
2. http://www.korydor.in.ua/ua/equality/bytva-za-smysli-yak-zhinoche-mystetstvo-zmiiyuye-svit.html
3. Dark Matter Activist Art and the Counter-Public Sphere. Gregory Sholette.
4. Feminism and tradition in aesthetics. edited by Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer. 1995
5. Gordon A. V. Problems of the National Liberation Struggle in the Work of Frantz Fanon. Moscow: Nauka, 1977. 240 pages.
6. Claire Snyder, Citizen-Soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republican Tradition, United States of America: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999.
7. Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
8. Woman-activist: Rojava legislation turned dreams into reality. https://hevale.nihilist.li/woman_in_rojava/
9. https://povaha.org.ua/v-armiji-maje-sluzhyty-stilky-zhinok-skilky-bazhaje-ministr-oborony-ukrajiny/