Conversation with artists
Lesia Khomenko and Anna Scherbyna
and special guest Ksenia Nouril (The Print Center, Philadelphia)
moderated by curator Monika Fabijanska
accompanying the exhibition
WOMEN AT WAR
at Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery, New York City
Wednesday, July 27, 1 PM WATCH HERE
Lesia Khomenko (b. 1980 in Kyiv) is a multidisciplinary artist who reconsiders the role of painting – she deconstructs narrative images and transforms paintings into objects, installations, performances, or videos. Her interest lies in revealing tools of visual manipulation in the context of history-making and myth-making. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv, 2004. A member of R.E.P. group since 2004, she is also a co-founder of curatorial union HUDRADA, a self-educational community based on interdisciplinary cooperation, 2008. Khomenko is an initiator and program director of the “Contemporary Art” course at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. Her works were shown in many exhibitions, including at the Lviv Municipal Art Center, 2021 (solo); PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, 2018 (solo); MNAC, Bucharest, 2016; The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2015; CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, 2014; The Future Generation Art Prize@Venice2013; Kyiv Biennial 2012 (main project); National Art Museum of Ukraine, 2012; Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, 2011 (solo); Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sweden, 2011; White Box, New York, 2010; MUMOK, Vienna, 2009; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2008; De Appel, Amsterdam, 2008; Ukrainian pavilion at Venice Biennale, 2007 (a collaboration with Mark Titchner); and Kunsthalle Vienna, 2006. She was a finalist of the Pinchuk Art Prize in 2009, 2011, and 2013, and a 2016 finalist of the Kazimir Malevich Award, Kyiv. She lives and works in Kyiv - since March 2022, she has temporarily been in the West.
| lesiakhomenko.com | instagram.com/lesia_khomenko
Anna Scherbyna (b. 1988 in Zaporizhzhia) is artist, curator, and illustrator. Her artistic practice examines the critical potential of mediums such as installation and video, drawing and painting, exploring the visual traditions of Ukraine’s painting school, political aspects of a landscape, historical memory, and gender performativity. She graduated from the National Academy of Visual Art and Architecture (2015) and Contemporary Art Course (2015). She participated in numerous exhibitions and projects, including The Portal, VBKÖ, Vienna, 2021; Armed and Dangerous, 2019; A Space of One’s Own, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv, 2017; Edenia, the city if the future, Kharkiv, 2017; Socialist Realism. Seeming to Be Another, Kyiv, 2017; TEXTUS. Embroidery, textile, feminism, Kyiv, 2017; In a shelter, Paris, 2015.
Scherbyna’s curatorial practice is driven by the feminist approach to building artistic communities and collaborations. As a member of curatorial groups, she organized a reading club for artists and theoreticians Chytanka (2020), international feminist exhibition The Cave of the Golden Rose, Kyiv, 2019, and Sabber, Deer and Spining Wheel in Stanica Luhanska, 2018. She was a co-founder of the Concrete Dates Collective (2015–17), and a member of the art-group “Iod” (2013–15). Since 2009, she has lived and worked in Kyiv; and since March 2022 in Germany.