David Elliott:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, it\u2019s like all my large shows of contemporary art in that it gives a particular take on what is happening now and on why some of the best art being made is absolutely central to a wider appreciation and experience of the world. I am also making the point that the past can act as both a prison and a platform for change, especially when viewing the present and future\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: You\u2019ve curated numerous major survey shows, including the last Sydney Biennale and \u201cBye Bye Kitty: Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art,\u201d on show last year at the Japan Society in New York. How is Kiev different?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE: <\/strong>Until the early 1990s Kiev was part of the Soviet Union and its contemporary culture is still digesting this somewhat traumatic experience. I would not call these earlier exhibitions survey shows though; they were very much crafted for where they were shown. But this common particularity is meant to enhance rather than limit their relevance to other contexts because I stress connections in the ways that art can be looked at rather than a more hermetic approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>How did you develop the theme \u2013 is it related to Kiev and Ukraine in particular?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> The show is related to Kiev, the Ukraine and its history. The theme is truly \u201cuniversal\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian: <\/strong>100 artists will participate \u2013 how did you go about selecting them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> I start with what I think is the big picture that is right for the Ukraine and then work inwards. Of course, I was not totally innocent of that region as I was one of the curators of \u201cAfter the Wall: Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe,\u201d which was shown in Stockholm, Budapest and Berlin in 1999-2000, but I needed to catch up over the past ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>Thirteen artists are from China. That\u2019s a lot. Was there a particular reason behind this or did it just happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> There is always a random element in such big shows simply because one cannot know everything \u2014 so the randomness is defined by one\u2019s limitations! I\u2019ve been working a lot in China recently so I\u2019m up to speed there as well as in Japan, Central Asia and Mongolia. But as Ukraine and Kiev are straddling the western end of the Silk Road, it seemed to me to make sense to reactivate these links to get away from the old Soviet cul-de-sac of the \u201cFriendship Countries\u201d \u2014 and there are real cultural links here, much less random than going for broke, say, in Africa or Latin America. Lastly there is a shared history of aesthetic modernity between the Soviet Union and China in the form of Socialist Realism and its legacy which I start to unpack in some of the contemporary art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Participating artists from China: Ai Weiwei, Wei Dong, Liu Jianhua, MadeIn Company, MAP Office, Shen Shaomin, Lam Tung Pang, Zhou Zixi, Song Dong, Wang Qingsong, Miao Xiaochun, Yin Xiuzhen, Yang Fudong<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>In February and March, the President of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Serhiy Kvit, banned the Visual Culture Research Center\u2019s exhibition \u201cUkrainian Body,\u201d then the Centre, and finally the Centre\u2019s building. That must have been quite some exhibition!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> The exhibition was okay \u2014 some works were good, others not so much, but the official response from the Academy President was so insulting and limiting to the right of free artistic expression that it felt like being back under Krushchev. I guess that this is one of the things I am referring to when I said that the past could be like a prison\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>Will the VCRC reopen?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE: <\/strong>It looks like it will not at the Academy although I am sure that the VCRC can reopen somewhere else and will probably be better there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>You\u2019re also working on the Hong Kong Central Police Station project. How\u2019s that coming along?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> Slowly. The building should be ready early 2015 but there is no clear view about how the project should be operated or funded. It\u2019s not easy to set up a public contemporary arts hub from scratch with about 1,500 sq. m net of museum quality exhibition space. Some people seemed to be a bit worried that contemporary art could be a little controversial! They should look at the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>When we visit Kiev, where should we go to eat and what should we order? (Are there any good Chinese restaurants in Kiev?)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t looked for Chinese restaurants in Kiev. What kind of person do you think I am? Best snack is Salo<\/em> \u2014 pork lard rubbed with salt and garlic and washed down by several hundred grams of honey pepper vodka \u2014 or Samogon<\/em>, their word for hooch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the main meal, I recommend borsch<\/em>(beetroot and meat soup). Deruny<\/em> (potato pancakes) and golubtsy<\/em> (cabbage leaves stuffed with meat, mushrooms and buckwheat) and then there\u2019s lots of fresh grilled vegetables andshashlik<\/em> (kebabed meats).<\/p>\n\n\n\n randian<\/strong>: <\/strong>And what do you recommend we take to read on the plane?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DE<\/strong>: The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel<\/em> \u2014 particularly the Red Cavalry<\/em> cycle. He was born in Odessa in 1894 and murdered by Stalin\u2019s secret police in 1940. Another great Ukrainian writer is Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita<\/em>(1938) is one of the great metaphysical novels of the twentieth century, so good, in fact, that it was not published in Russia until about thirty years after it had been finished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Ran Dian editorsChinese translation b … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hant\/1204chinakiev011-sq265.jpg\")
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