You're reading: Donetsk art center finds ways to flourish in exile

In June 2014, amid Russia’s military invasion of eastern Ukraine, a non-profit platform for contemporary culture was forced to leave Donetsk and relocate to Kyiv.

Since settling in Kyiv, Izolyatsiya (Isolation) has become one of the capital’s major cultural institutions, but its employees still dream of returning to Donetsk when the war ends.

“We will return,” says Mykhailo Glubokyi, Izolyatsiya’s project coordinator, during a Kyiv Post interview from the group’s new headquarters – a former laboratory of Kyiv Shipbuilding and Ship Repair plant.

Russian-backed separatists seized the former insulation factory in Donetsk where the art center was located since 2010 and destroyed most of Izolyatsiya’s artworks. The separatists have since turned the former art center into their training area, a prison and a storage site for weapons.

Hluboky said Izolyatsiya’s portfolio made it a target. It used to organize Ukrainian literature festivals in Donetsk and various cultural and educational projects that “did not fit the separatists’ ideology,” according to Glubokyi.

“We were allowed to take only something flat – mainly paintings and photographs. Most of our collection of art was lost,” says Hluboky.

A giant lipstick, an installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou dedicated to the women of Donbas, was blown up for fun, while other metal objects, including a metal deer figure, a symbol of industrial beauty, were likely scrapped, Glubokyi said.

Izolyatsuiya is owned and sponsored by Liubov Mykhaylova, a businesswoman and daughter of the last Soviet director of the Donetsk insulation factory that hosted the art center. While in Donetsk, Izolyatsiya accepted donations from local businesses – but never from Rinat Akhmetov, the richest Ukrainian who hails from the Donbas.

Now, it has to seek grants from the European Union and private donations. Glubokyi says that the lack of money doesn’t allow Izolyatsiya to operate at full capacity.

All of Izolyatsiya’s 15 employees are Donetsk natives, though some of them are blacklisted by Russia-backed separatists and have not been to Donetsk for two years now.

Two years in exile have been fruitful, nonetheless.

In 2015, Izolyatsiya launched Izone, a creative space where anyone can attend workshops in photo, silkscreen decoration or lithography. This year alone, Izolyatsiya has already held seven art exhibitions.

In September, Izolyatsiya will set up an interactive sculpture and architecture installation by Irish artists Brendan Jamison and Mark Revels called “Sugar Democracy” that refers to the historic houses in Kyiv, many of which are built by the Tereshchenko family, the wealthy sugar magnates of the early 20th century.

Also in September, Izolyatsiya is bringing 10 curators from around the globe to meet local artists and art collectors and get to know about modern Ukrainian art.

The foundation’s events often cause a stir.

French conceptual artist Daniel Buren works in Donetsk on his on-site installation for Izolyatsiya’s project “Where is the Time?” on Aug. 6, 2012. (Ruslan Semichev/Izolyatsiya)

One of Izolyatsiya’s recent installations was “Inhabiting Shadows,” a metal staircase installed over the plinth of the toppled Vladimir Lenin monument in the center of Kyiv. It provoked a discussion about what should replace the demolished monument.

In 2015, Izolyatsiya made headlines internationally when it staged an art performance “On Vacation” at the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale to mock Vladimir Putin’s statements denying Russian military invasion into Ukraine’s Crimea in March 2014.

Back then, Putin described Russian camouflaged military personnel in Crimea as tourists vacationing in Crimea and masquerading as the military. The performance featured a group of people handing out the military uniforms to Biennale visitors encouraging them to take selfies in camouflage and post them on social media with the #onvacation hashtag.

Hluboky says that the modern Ukrainian artistry is gaining more international attention.

“I’d say that because of the war people started to pay more attention to what has changed in Ukraine,” Glubokyi says. “It is very important for us to demonstrate to the West how Ukrainian artists see the events in their country.”

The platform keeps close ties with the Donbas by organizing various art exhibitions and projects in the Kyiv-controlled cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast.

“We organize cultural events there because culture should be a bridge between the modern Ukraine and the Ukraine that we plan to rebuild in the east,” Glubokyi says, after the war.