Net Making is a group exhibition curated by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, which draws from the practice of collective weaving of camouflage nets as a metaphor for joint horizontal actions.

“We thought of a key metaphor that would reflect today’s Ukraine. Ukrainians are uniting: they take to the streets, volunteer to fight, and gather to weave camouflage nets. Weaving nets is a process that encompasses more than just making a net to help the army. It is a recognition of a joint action that is beneficial for each other and for the country. This is not a top-down decision,” the curators comment.

Oleksandr Burlaka: Work, visualization of an architectural installation made of metal and woven fabric, 2023.
© Image: Courtesy of the author

The Ukrainian pavilion is framed by the architectural installation Work by Oleksandr Burlaka composed of woven linen fabrics from the 1950s and earlier — different in textures, pieces of fabric are bought at an online marketplace and found at Ukrainian flea markets. The installation creates a circular space for three art projects: the film Civilians. Invasion by Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi, the installation Best Wishes by Katya Buchatska, and the video Comfort Work by Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva.

Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi: Civilians. Invasion, 2023. Found footage film, 57'19".
© Still from the film. Courtesy of the authors

Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi will present the film Civilians. Invasion which tells the story of the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine through the eyes of survivors. The artists assembled the film from the videos they found using open sources and private YouTube channels. “This film is a horror encyclopedia, capturing the harrowing experiences people endure during a full-scale invasion,” the artists note. Valuable for its multi-voiced documentary veracity, Civilians. Invasion reveals the transformative experience of a full-scale invasion as a radical break with the normality of peaceful life.

Iryna Holoborodko: I wish everybody a good mirroring / I wish you a sweet life / I wish everybody to look at the haze. Holoborodko's postcard Wishes from Katya Buchatska's project Best Wishes, 2023
© Image: Courtesy of the author

Anna Sapon's carpet in the work-in-progress from Katya Buchatska's project Best Wishes, 2024
© Photo: Oleksandr Popenko. Courtesy of the author.

Katya Buchatska will present Best Wishes, a work she created in collaboration with neurodivergent artists. During the first week of the full-scale invasion, Buchatska resumed daily online classes at an inclusive art workshop in Kyiv. “Every day we discussed and painted familiar things that brought us back to a certain routine. Life went on, days passed, birthdays came. We wished each other happy birthday on every occasion, and gradually the language clichés became more and more obtrusive and incongruous, alienated from us,” says the artist. In Best Wishes, Buchatska focuses on the free interpretation of the language we are used to — clichés and set phrases that we use almost automatically — by neurodivergent people. During the war, the problematic use of thoughtless clichés becomes tangible, and some phrases, on the contrary, despite their simplicity and stereotypicality, reacquire their original, newly sincere meanings.

Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva: Comfort Work, 2023–2024. Video series
© Photo: Courtesy of the author

Continuing the theme of clichés and otherness, Comfort Work by Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva problematizes stereotypical perceptions of Ukrainian refugees abroad. The artists invited professional European actors to play Ukrainian refugees on camera, portraying them as they are seen by the societies of the host countries. Based on interviews with real people who have experienced displacement from Ukraine, the portraits create images of refugees that correspond to the desires of Europeans based on stereotypes about immigrants. “The main audience of these videos is European viewers who can see images of Ukrainians that are convenient for them,” the artists emphasize.

Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi have been working together since 2019. In 2022, they founded Ukrainian.Photographies, a platform that collects visual and textual research on Ukrainian photography. In 2023, they curated the HOME programme at Open Eye Gallery, Norton Priory, Unity Theatre, Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Atkinson Gallery, and Kirkby Gallery as part of the EuroFestival, a parallel programme of Eurovision 2023 in Liverpool, UK. They were co-curators of several exhibitions dedicated to the Ukrainian Photographic Alternative, an informal group that united over 100 photographers from all over Ukraine.

National Pavilion of Ukraine
Arsenale, Sale d'Armi, building A, 1st floor
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From press information.
© Cover photo: Oleksandr Burlaka: "Work", visualization of an architectural installation made of metal and woven fabric, 2023. Courtesy of the author