A unique exhibition, What is Your Name? opened on December 10, 2016 in the Mystetsky Arsenal as part of the project “You Are Among Friends. Let's be Together”. The exhibition brings together a number of thematic projects of the organizers and partners, from art audio-visual content, virtual reality, film screenings, theatre performances and art spaces in public lectures and seminars for the media. It immerses you in a world of experiences of people displaced from the areas of armed conflict. It gathers the works of artists and photographers who were in the East of Ukraine, who find the problem of displacement close and who survived the crisis themselves.
Children's drawings
The immersion on the problems of the displaced starts from the very first hall. The walls are full of numbers: There were 31 million migrant children in the world in 2015. Out of every 200 children, one is a refugee. A total of 1.7 million people, of whom 230,000 are children, have moved from the armed- conflict zone in Ukraine. Your mind is appalled by these figures and you find yourself thinking: “This many displaced children could fill three football stadiums in Kyiv.” said Heorhii Tuka the deputy minister of the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced persons. He came to the opening of the exhibition and was astounded by the hall of children's drawings.
The drawings are not only hanging on the walls. There is a large house constructed of the children's drawings. There are drawings that have a touching, sun-lit brightness about them. Others are in dark, black tones showing such things as a house hit by a shell. "I have been doing volunteer work for a few years but never helped children, I was helping army all the time. And when I started working as the chairman of the Luhansk regional administration, I visited an orphanage in the city of Severodonetsk once. They gave me a stack of children's drawings there. I flipped through them - ordinary drawings, bright, and I suddenly see one in dark colours among them - a house with a black spot getting closer, a shell flying toward the house. The picture was painted by a child who saw the bombing," the deputy minister remembers. And he notes that children's drawings touch him the most in the current exhibition. When he sees the children's experiences expressed this way, in a drawing, the question torments him: why do we demolish the lives of children? After all, the children are those who suffer most of all in conflicts. "It is our common responsibility to help them overcome the fear, confusion and turn them to their normal life," Giovanna Barberis, the Chief of UNICEF’s Representative Office in Ukraine said.
Moving with a Plaid Plastic Bag
Exhibition expositions arranged to gradually immerse visitors into the problems of migrants. There is a room with a lot of plaid bags gathered in the centre that makes the greatests impression on visitors. These are the same type of plastic checkered shopping bags that most Ukrainians have used at least once in their lifetime when moving to a new place. "The plaid bags are a symbol of movement and changes, especially for me. My parents are from Makiivka. Now they are internally displaced persons. It is not easy, of course, for people who have lived in one place for all their lives to change everything, and suddenly find themselves homeless. And when you have not yet settled, the worst thing was to call your mother when she doesn't pick up. And at that moment you imagine all the horrible things happening.
Once a shell hit in the grandmother's house at night. Everyone was alive with only the windows smashed in my grandmother's apartment. It is difficult to get used to such things. Although they got accustomed to it and speak about it all so calmly, it's terrible," said Olha Karpus, a visitor of the exhibition, co-founder of the Children's School of Journalism Journos Gang in sharing her memories.
The Stories Told by Children
In the next room you will find kids watching you from the screen. When you start the video, the child from the screen will tell you their story about the move. It is impossible to listen to these video interviews without empathy. "The exhibition was very emotional,” Olesia Ostrovska-Luta, CEO of Mystetsky Arsenal said. “It helps to feel the feelings of people who have left their home. When we all live in a tough situation as we have now, we try to keep a very narrow circle of or acquaintances and close friends. And here you can see other people's lives, and actually feel them."
It is also impossible to ignore the work of the British artist Richard Ansett, his Mother and Child from the project Partly Cloudy that was granted by the ISOLATION Foundation. You cannot see a mother there, only her arm hanging over the baby. This is an example of how the fragile world of a child can be disturbed. And at the same time, it is a symbol of maternal responsibility for her child and its future.
Changes for the Best
In addition to graphics and video interviews with the children, you can watch short films created by the children of Eastern Ukraine, together with the authors of the Yellow Bus project. As you move gradually from one room to another, you can feel the experiences and hardships of displaced persons through artistic images. By the end of the exhibition, the feeling of grief and anxiety decreases gradually through the presentation of a couple of rooms centred on the projects that are related to creation and change for the better.
The School of the Future is a special place in the exhibition; there the real magic happens. Children's drawings come to life. It is enough to bring a tablet to it and then a dinosaur from children's drawings become three-dimensional and wags its tail. And the planets drawn with the usual crayons begin to rotate.
Start to think
In addition to artistic projects, documentaries about refugees and migrants are demonstrated as a part of the exhibition, such as: “Bon Voyage,” a film directed by Mark Wilkins. You will also find the winner of the 2016 Berlin Film Festival. “The Sea on Fire,” as well as documentaries on migration.
"The target audience of the exhibition is every Ukrainian. We want to see those who had to endure the move, those who live in cities that receive migrants, and those who are open and those not yet ready for dialogue. We believe that art is the place where the dialogue can begin," Katia Taylor, the What Is Your Name? exhibition curator said. And she adds that psychologists and sociologists will work with children during the exhibition. The children will create drawings and architectural objects together with the artists. So, with the help of art, we can look for answers to the questions of psychological rehabilitation.
One visitor of the exhibition admitted that before getting there she didn't even think about the problems of migrants. And now, after getting acquainted with their lives, she hasn't just begun to think but started to feel and to understand what it means to lose your home and to start over in a new place. "The exhibition will gather people who care. Therefore, let those who care grab the people who never thought of displaced persons, and lead them here. Only by presenting this issue to the country will people begin to understand the problems of displaced persons," Heorhii Tuka said in sharing his thoughts on the exhibition.
The organisers of the exhibition: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Department for the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine, StarLightMedia group, FILM.UA Group and National cultural, art and museum complex Mystetsky Arsenal.
IT IS IMPORTANT: Admission to the exhibition “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” is free of charge from Dec 10 till Dec 13, as well as from Dec 19 till Dec 25. During RІZDVYANY ARSENAL (Christmas Arsenal) from Dec, 14 till Dec, 18 entrance fee will be 60 UAH.
‘You are Among Friends. Let's Be United” is a project implemented with the financial support of the Government of Germany through Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
The exhibition program can be found here. Stay tuned to Mystetsky Arsenal via web page and on Facebook.
