“We were born to make Kafka reality”

Vagrich Bakhchanyan

At the 5th Odesa Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Kharkiv Municipal Gallery presents its vision of social turbulence — the project “Song of the Stormy Petrel. A Short Course.” The project includes works by Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Sergey Bratkov **, Boris Mikhailov, Yevgeniy Pavlov *, Hamlet Zinkivskyi, Anton Tkachenko, and Vitaliy Kokhan ***, where each artist presents their own personal statement about a “place of power” and transformation.

One hundred years of turbulence in Kharkiv is a separate issue that requires close attention and careful analysis, which is what the project “Song of the Stormy Petrel. A Short Course” is dedicated to.

The title contains references to three important “literary” works: the first is “History of the CPSU(b). Short Course” — a textbook on the history of the All-Union Communist Party, published in 1938. It was compiled with the personal participation of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), J. V. Stalin. The book was intended to convey the most important communist ideology and its history to every resident of the Union, regardless of their occupation and level of education. The second is “Song of the Stormy Petrel” by Maxim Gorky, the chief writer of the USSR and singer of communism. Both primary sources became important milestones in the upbringing of the “Soviet person,” and both characterize the development of society in the first half of the twentieth century with all its upheavals and unrest. In addition, the third, hidden literary primary source that inspired the curator to create the project is present in the exhibition — the play “The Seagull – The Stormy Petrel” by Vagrich Bakhchanyan. It refers to two writers, Gorky and Chekhov, mocking the revolutionary rhetoric of the former and ironizing the intellectual and reflective views of the latter, taking the text mixed by the author to absurdity, to a grotesque absolute.

Over the last “one hundred years of turbulence,” Kharkiv has been shaken, changed, and developed. It was during this period that it began proudly calling itself the “cultural capital” and the “main stronghold of Constructivism.” The past century influenced its entire life, creating the city, its people, and its distinctive culture.

And, of course, this was reflected in all the artists who were born, live/lived, and work in Kharkiv.

The exhibition features objects by authors who worked in the city during different periods of the past century, and the viewer is invited to see the development of attitudes toward social unrest, following the project from its beginning to its end. Starting with the ironic and sarcastic Bakhchanyan, who laughs at everything happening around him, passing through the Kharkiv School of Photography, represented by Sergey Bratkov and Yevgeniy Pavlov, which reflects an alternative view of Soviet reality, the viewer arrives in the present — sad and thoughtful in the works of young artists Hamlet Zinkivskyi, Vitaliy Kokhan, and Anton Tkachenko, or desperate and disturbing in the photographs of the legendary Boris Mikhailov. And, of course, the final point in the story of Kharkiv turbulence will once again be made by Vagrich Bakhchanyan, reminding us that any transformation — social or personal — requires the ability to laugh at oneself.

* Works by Yevgeniy Pavlov from the “Total Photography” series from the collection of Tetiana and Borys Hrynyov

** Sergey Bratkov’s collages are provided by VOVATANYA Gallery

*** Vitaliy Kokhan’s object was created as part of the “Circle of Communication” residency at YermilovCentre

Project partner: VOVATANYA Gallery