Weekend in the East - Contemporary art and photography: a snapshot of Ukraine

Meeting with visual artists Igor Gusev and Iryna Ozarynska and curator and photography researcher Kateryna Radchenko, founder and director of the Odessa International Photo Days festival. Moderated by curator Solomia Savchuk, head of the Contemporary Art Department of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Museum Complex of Art and Culture, a leading cultural institution in Kiev.

As part of the cultural festival A Weekend in the East.

Painter, author of performances, videos, installations, also curator and poet, Igor Gusev is a famous Ukrainian visual artist. He lives and works in Odessa and graduated from the Grekov Art School in Odessa. His work is regularly presented in the most prestigious institutions in Ukraine: National Art Museum of Ukraine, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Odessa Art Museum and Odessa Museum of Contemporary Art. He has had over twenty solo exhibitions in Odessa, Kiev, Milan, Prague and Vienna and has participated in group exhibitions in Berlin, London, Vienna, Basel, Copenhagen and Cologne. He has also curated numerous projects, including Save The President. Parallel program of ARSENALE 2012, at the Dymchuk Gallery in Kiev (2012) and Goodbye crisis and Empty Tunnel, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Odessa (2008).
In 2007, Igor Gusev founded the Art Raiders association in Odessa, a project that has had several editions - "Art-raiders of the world", "Art raiders against vandalism", the most important of which took place at the Starokonny flea market in Odessa. In 2008, he opened the Norma art space in Odessa, where for four years some fifteen exhibitions and projects by some of the most renowned Ukrainian artists were presented.
His project Sacred Import Substitution combines several series using different techniques created after 24 February 2022. Each day since then, the artist has created a work, and each one is a concentrate of humour, mythology, folklore, art history, mixed with the urgent issues of the day. He finds the materials for his work mainly at flea markets among piles of old books and art albums.

Born in Odessa, a graduate of the Grekov School of Art in Odessa and the National Academy of Arts and Architecture in Kiev, Iryna Ozi Ozarynska is an artist known for her graphic works, performances and artistic interventions. She lives and works in Venice.
Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Visioni Altre Gallery in Venice, the Museum of Modern Art in Odessa, the Book Art Museum in Lodz, the Kordegarda Gallery in Warsaw and the Museum of Literature in Odessa. She has participated in major group exhibitions, including No one will say my words for me. No one will do my job for me at Drop-In It's OK in Amsterdam (2022), Tam Gdzie Teraz at Labirynt Gallery in Lublin (2018), VVM5 (VENICE VENDING MACHINE - 5th edition) in Venice and Liverpool (2017), Enfant terrible. Conceptual Art in Odessa at the National Museum of Art of Ukraine (2015). She participated in the 58th Venice Biennale, the 5th and 4th Odessa Biennial of Contemporary Art and the Odessa and Kiev Biennial of Contemporary Art "Kiev School".
In her project The Heritage Transformation of Sonia Delaunay, she explores how her life and work resonate with those of Sonia Delaunay. Both women were born in Odessa, lived abroad, Delaunay in Paris, she in Venice. Both experienced war. Like Delaunay, Ozarynska defines herself as an artist of experimentation and colour. By exploring and transforming Delaunay's legacy, Ozarynska reveals the importance of the imaginary in the constitution of being - which may ultimately be a "patchwork of myths, fantasies, beliefs and those things perceived as reality".

Kateryna Radchenko is an art curator and photography researcher.
In 2015 she founded the international festival Photo Days Odessa, and has been its director ever since.
Kateryna Radchenko studied photography during residencies at Villa Arson, Nice, as well as in Warsaw and at the Museum of Photography in San Diego. She has published articles in numerous magazines and digital platforms, including Fotograf, Magenta, EIKON, British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazines. She has curated exhibitions in Ukraine, South Korea, Sweden, Georgia, France, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Poland and the UK and has been a portfolio judge for numerous festivals in Riga, Lodz, Suwon and Vienna.
With galerie delpire & co she presents two projects, Images Tell Stories and The Information Front.
The first is a book published in collaboration with the Finnish Museum of Photography that looks at vernacular ways of reading photography based on family photo albums taken in Ukraine and Finland. The second is a journal founded by Kateryna Radchenko, Donald Weber and Christopher Noon and edited by SYB. It is an archive of photographs documenting the war in Ukraine between February and April 2022. The journal brings together the work of Ukrainian photographers from all over the country.

Solomia Savchuk is curator of the Contemporary Art Department of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Museum of Art and Culture Complex, a leading cultural institution in Kiev. She curated the exhibition Indomitable. Ukrainian Photographs, which opened the Ukrainian Spring at the Cultural Centre of the Ukrainian Embassy in Paris.
Solomia Savchuk is responsible for the creation, implementation of projects and exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Department of the Mystetskyi Arsenal, head of the Contemporary Art Laboratory of the Mala Gallery, a support and development platform for artists, and a member of the Board and Committee in charge of programming.
She has designed several exhibitions and catalogues for the Mystetskyi Arsenal Museum, including SENSITIVITY. Contemporary Ukrainian photography (2021) and Andriy Sagaidakovsky. Scenery. Welcome! (2020). She curated the exhibition Short Stories. Contemporary Artists from Ukraine recently held in Rome, Venice and Treviso, and also directed the project The Flow for the Dior Haute Couture show, Autumn-Winter 2022-2023 season, at the Rodin Museum.