On February 10, 2012, the rector of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Serhij Kwit went to an art exhibition Ukrainian Body, organized by the Visual Culture Research Center at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. After visiting the exhibition, he took a key and locked it. He commented on his action as follows: «This is not an exhibition. This is shit».
Ukrainian Body is an exhibition that brings together works by 17 politically engaged artists from Ukraine. The aim of the exhibition is to explore the influence of social structures and codes upon the corporality of post-Soviet subjects. The artworks presented in the exhibition are dealing with issues such as poverty, social exclusion, homelessness, sexual exploitation, state oppression and pornography.
The closure of the exhibition by the rector of the Academy attracted unprecedented attention from the media. As a response to the media outcry the rector stated that pornography is a too controversial issue to be debated in the university. The social relevance of the rest of the presented works was effectively negated. The exhibition remained closed for the public although several press-screenings had been organized for those interested in seeing the exhibition.
The administration of the Academy started to persecute Visual Culture Research Center as an institution subjected to the academic regulations soon after shutting down the exhibition. At the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Academy the activities of the Visual Culture Research Center were suspended due to its ‘non-scientific character’. Since its foundation in 2008 the Center aimed to develop a productive cooperation between artists, academics and political activists through organizing exhibitions, conferences and publishing projects that explore the common ground between the spheres of art, knowledge and politics.
Media attention towards Ukrainian Body exhibition proved to be an important symptom of Post-Soviet politics of art. During the media outcry that followed the closure of the exhibition and cessation of the Visual Culture Research Center art became factor of a heated debate that spread far beyond well-known categories and discourses. For instance when the students of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy organized a protest against academic censorship at their alma mater, they faced two dozens of representatives of the far-right party Svoboda shouting ‘You are shit’ (referring to the rector’s definition of the exhibition) and ‘No room for perverts at the Academy’. Soon after this protest (and after receiving tens of letters of support from academics and artists from around the globe, including a letter from the former President of Poland, honorary professor of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Oleksandr Kwasniewski), the rector cancelled his decision to suspend the activities of the Visual Culture Research Center.
Ukrainian Body: Exhibition Forbidden is a short film that studies the reaction of society towards the manifestations of politically engaged art. The censorship of the exhibition leads to distorted media attention serving as a veil to defend society from the representation of drastic social issues through the means of art. As a result of the media outcry art becomes a mean to provoke discussions on the issues that are silenced or ignored in post-Soviet society.
Oleksiy Radynski
Breaking the News is a media activist project aimed at merging the tools of art and journalism. Making films politically is no longer enough. Time to make political films.