An art exhibition in a Kyiv university turned scandalous after its president closed it down on Feb. 10, accusing the organizers of propagandizing pornography.
As a result, a mediocre exhibition received a lot more attention that it normally would, while questions of censorship arise at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, a university that touts itself as one of the nation’s most liberal.
Yet university president Serhiy Kvit insists he “did what he had to do.”
The exhibition called “Ukrayinske tilo”(Ukrainian body) was opened in the KMA Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) on Feb. 7. But now its doors are padlocked
“I just dropped by, and was shocked,” explains Kvit. “The paintings, video and photos presented at the exhibition haven’t got any aesthetic concept. There is nothing about art. One of the slogans, for instance, reads ‘my porn is my right’ and it is propaganda of pornography.”
But the organizers are outraged by both the president’s decision and his assessment of modern art.
“We think he had no right to close the exhibition,” says Oksana Briuhovetska, it curator. “We will fight to open it again.”
Kvit insists that the organizers failed to follow standard procedure for organizing public exhibitions.
“They had to fill in a special form and register it,” explains Kvit. “This exhibition could provoke rage. It’s meant to cause provocations. It’s not the format for the university, where minors are studying.”
Authors of the exhibition say their art is about “the whole specter of human feelings” and about “corporeality in our society,” not porn.
One of the exhibits, for example, is a bottle filled with the blood of Oleksandr Volodarskiy, who spent several months in prison in 2011 for imitating a sexual act in front of the parliament. There is also a slide show running on TV next to the bottle, picturing the process of blood donation. Some of the other exhibits are risque photos of homosexual couples, paintings of naked people taking pictures of themselves in the mirror and sculptures made out of chicken skin. One of artists repepresented is Nikita Kadan, who won an Hr 100,000 first prize at the PinchukArtCentre art competition of 2011.
Oleksandr Gusev, a film critic who came to see the exhibition as a visitor “just because of all of this hullabaloo,” said he didn’t see any pornography among the exhibits. Nor did he see any art.
His assessment of the exhibition was that “it does represent the state of our society, but it deserves to be neglected and forgotten.”
Nevertheless, it continues to attract attention as media groups swarm to the art center for daily press tours to see the controversial art with their own eyes.
There is talk of reopening the exhibition, but its fate will be decided at a roundtable that will gather all sides concerned at an as yet unscheduled date.
In the meantime, Bryukhovetska says “it’s pity and shame that there is such a censor in KMA.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
