With Ukraine: Short Stories. Contemporary Artists from Ukraine, curated by Solomia Savchuk, Head of Contemporary Art at the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, opens the 2022 exhibition season of the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts. Created in collaboration with the “Imago Mundi Foundation”, the exhibition which, as explained by Giovanna Melandri, President of the MAXXI Foundation, aims to be “a testimony of closeness to the population and artistic community of the country affected by Putin’s aggression”, represents a survey of the contemporary Ukrainian art scene through the works created specifically for the Imago Mundi Collection by 140 artists.
The “Imago Mundi Foundation”
The Imago Mundi Foundation is a non-profit institution born in 2018 as an evolution of the Imago Mundi Collection, in turn born over 10 years ago from an idea by Luciano Benetton, who has brought together over 26,000 works in the 10 by 12 cm format over time, created by artists from 160 countries and native communities and collected in as many catalogs. In 2018 the opening of the Gallerie delle Prigioni, the ancient Habsburg prisons in the center of Treviso restored by the architect Tobia Scarpa, marked a further step towards what the Imago Mundi Foundation represents today, creating an experimental platform that hosts exhibitions, talks, events international and educational workshops. The Foundation, which is aimed at all generations through plural registers and interdisciplinary and free proposals, presents itself as an inclusive agora for artists, from emerging to more established ones. The aim is to return an image of what the world is, but also to imagine what it could be.
If war produces art
Ukraine: Short Stories is one of the thematic collections strongly linked to the 2014 events with which Ukraine was forced to measure itself, and to the profound changes that this country, a delicate crossroads between the Baltic and Black Seas, has gone through in recent years. «In these terrible days – comments Enrico Bossan, artistic director of the Foundation – the Imago Mundi Foundation expresses solidarity with the Ukrainian people, its artists, the artistic community and the world of culture in general. It is often remembered that Ukraine expresses in its name the fact that it is a borderland, a country “between”, which contains multiple cultures. And culture must be today more than ever a space for dialogue and inclusion, as well as freedom of expression and creation. Our will is to contribute to expanding this space, giving voice to Ukrainian artists gathered in this collection. The Imago Mundi Foundation has accepted with great pleasure the invitation to build this project together with MAXXI to testify the closeness we all feel towards the Ukrainians ».
The exhibition from the catalog of the collection
The exhibition is hosted from 10 to 20 March 2022 at the MAXXI Corner, with a symbolic ticket of € 5. The proceeds will be donated to the fund for the humanitarian emergency in Ukraine made up of UNHCR, UNICEF and the Red Cross, as well as the proceeds from the museum on Sunday 27 February and Sunday 6 March. On display 140 works by young and emerging artists and artists and established authors already present in the most important international museums and galleries who, with strength and passion, reflect a society that is reinventing itself, through instability, ideological and social changes, cruel conflicts, to continuous search for new ways to face history and affirm a new artistic freedom.