OUR CURRENT ACTIVITIES, PROJECTS
ON THE MUSEUM CREATION
AND SHARING ART VALUES
Ecosystem projects
Navigating the War as Artists in Ukraine: A Practical Resource is a collection of lessons learned about staying safe in a full-scale war developed in consultation with artists who have lived through the reality of war in Ukraine. Shared and individual traumatic experiences, dangers and threats have forced Ukrainian society to adopt new strategies of existence. Artists, in turn, have changed their approaches to life and work. Work on this publication has started in 2024, two years after the full-scale Russian invasion began, when the experience of living in crisis had become somewhat routine for the society.
Support and development of the field
Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund is a fund to support artists and cultural workers during the war and after.
Since 2014 the war waged of russia against Ukraine has been breaking lives of civilians, including lives of independent artists and cultural workers. They all have the right to live in safety and continue their work. Because muses aren’t silent. With despair, pain, joy and hope, captured from the air, artists write down things that should be preserved forever.
To help them, MOCA NGO together with independent media Zaborona, gallery The Naked Room and cultural institution Mystetskyi Arsenal—founded the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF). The UEAF accumulates charity resources, information on available programs, and other opportunities of Ukrainian and foreign institutions to support Ukrainian independent artists, curators, art managers, researchers and non-governmental cultural initiatives.
CEO of UEAF—Illya Zabolotnyi.
Major supporters:
Museum
A new type of institution that unites professionals of contemporary art of Ukraine, makes it more accessible to different audiences and enables the emergence of a public dialogue about a common future on its territory. UMCA uses the idea of decentralization—it is not a single museum, but a network consisting of autonomous institutions in Ukrainian regions. United by a common mission, values and collection, they interact through the Digital Platform, which provides access to an organized database of works of Ukrainian art of the second half of the 20th – 21st centuries from state and private collections.
Museum
The Wartime Art Archive is a curatorial observation of the artistic process since the full-scale invasion.
The primary goal of the archive is to document the vast body of artworks created and published on social networks by artists after February 24, 2022. These works are presented on a specially created website, accompanied by an analysis, processing, description, and phased interviews with the participants.
Currently, the digital archive houses images of artworks from more than 220 authors, totaling over 15,000 pieces for processing.
The archive has a clear chronological frame: starting on February 24, 2022, when martial law was imposed across Ukraine, and will end on the date when this martial law ceases.
Projects based on archive artworks and artworks by artists from our archive:
Museum
With the support from the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago) and Therme Art, we purchased 119 works (from 24 authors) created after February 24, 2022, for the MOCA NGO/ Ukrainian Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) collection, as art pieces must be preserved in public domain. Advocating for the idea of developing a transparent art market, MOCA NGO acquires artworks with proper documentary formalities and with the payment of all taxes stipulated by Ukrainian legislation.
UMCA Collection currently contains 235 works.
Museum / Support and development of the field
The Prytoka is created as a collection management system for contemporary art works. It facilitates primary art record-keeping, populating record cards with metadata about the piece, linking them with images, videos, and audio recordings, forming collections, and publishing data in an online catalogue.
Art-related institutions (state and private museums, collectors, foundations) can use this digital platform to store digital copies of their works, along with all necessary data.
The project’s curator — Larion Lozovyi.
Ecosystem projects
At the end of 2022, MOCA NGO, in partnership with the memory culture platform “Past / Future / Art”, based on previous developments, designed a long-term collaborative program addressing the challenges in commemorating the Russian-Ukrainian war. The initiation of the “Post-War Memory Culture in Ukraine” program took place in April 2023, with the support of Switzerland.
Program Curators: Yuliia Hnat, Olga Balashova, Oksana Dovgopolova, Kateryna Semenyuk, Hnat Zabrodskyy.
Support and development of the field
Memorialization Practices Lab is an educational and research project with a practical component that will run from March to July 2024 as part of the “Post-War Memory Culture in Ukraine” program with the support of The Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine.
The goal of the laboratory is to find a new visual language for commemorating the Russian-Ukrainian war and expand approaches to creating memorial projects.
Participants will learn about various aspects of working with memory in the fields of Memory Studies and public history, psychology, international law, practices of organizing international memorial competitions, and will participate in the development of ideas for memorial objects for several war memorial sites in Ukraine.
Curators of the laboratory: Oksana Dovgopolova, Olga Balashova, Kateryna Semenyuk, Yuliia Hnat.
Ecosystem projects
The course ‘Practice on Art, Memory and History’ is an educational program, developed by MOCA NGO and implemented in partnership with the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts (KAMA) as part of the “Post-War Memory Culture in Ukraine” program with the support of The Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine. The course is aimed at studying, understanding and developing a cultural product that is thematically related to individual and collective memory, forms of social trauma, community histories and popular history.
This course offers an insight into the history and development of culture and art through work with memory and communities, as well as practical work with imagery in individual practice, public and activist work.
Curators of the program: Halyna Hleba, Olga Balashova, Yuliia Hnat and Anna-Maria Kucherenko.
Ecosystem projects
The Ukrainian art ecosystem legal research: comprehensive analysis, legislation and policy recommendations development.
The project’s overall goal is to build a comprehensive, tangible, and sustainable Ukrainian art objects legislative framework to ensure clear rules for art objects circulation, acquisition, authentication and trans-border movement through in-depth research, EU/global best-practices analysis and multiple stakeholder inclusion approach.
The project was signed on 21st February 2022 and will be started at the end of March.
It is supported by the grant of The Swiss Confederation, represented by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, acting through Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine.
The key Project’s beneficiary—the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
Project organizer: MOCA NGO
Project Lead—Hnat Zabrodskyy.
Policy development: Oksana Bulana, Anton Melnyk, Olena Zabrodska, Hnat Zabrodskyy, Yuliia Hnat, Olga Balashova, Oleg Savichuk, Oksana Zabolotna, Natalia Gnatyuk, Nazar Polyvka.
Ecosystem projects
Art Sanct Task Force is a working group, led by the National Agency of Ukraine on Corruption Prevention (NACP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy (MCIP). The objective of the group is to identify violations of sanctions in global art market operations and prevent the illicit trade of art objects and antiques that were stolen by the Russian Federation from Ukraine during the war.
The MOCA NGO has joined the Art Sanct Task Force initiative with its expertise.
The work of the Art Sanct Task Force is conducted in three main directions:
REGULATION: Proposals from Ukraine to the global art industry regarding compliance with sanctions against the russian federation.
CAMPAIGN: Highlighting integrity and transparency in the art world – communicating with participants of the global art market and discussing the future of the industry in the face of new challenges to global security.
PRACTICAL TOOLS: Development of War & Art database that will allow global industry leaders to more actively counteract the illegal circulation of art stolen from Ukraine during the Russian war and to comply with the sanctions regime for assets in the “luxury art” segment.
We highly value the collaboration in this initiative with international experts Irina Tarsis, Founder and Managing Director of the Center for Art Law (US/CH), Nanne Dekking, CEO, and Timothy Kompanchenko, CTO of Artory.
Museum / Ecosystem projects
The UMCA Library is a curatorial project by MOCA NGO that gathers and makes accessible global knowledge on contemporary art and related practices. It supports academic research and fosters dialogue around current artistic phenomena. The UMCA Library is created as a network of research spaces in cooperation with public and private cultural institutions.
The first physical space of the UMCA Library has been opened in partnership with the Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine (Kyiv, 1 Mykhaila Hrushevskoho St). It now features a curated collection of 48 English-language publications, some available in multiple copies. This selection was developed as part of the course “Practice about Art, Memory and History”, curated by Yuliia Hnat, Halyna Hleba, Olga Balashova and Anna-Maria Kucherenko.
We’d also like to thank our colleagues who helped initiate the library project: curators Polina Baitsym and Borys Filonenko, and project co-launch partner Veronika Selega. From the outset, we have intentionally focused on English-language academic sources that are rarely available and have not been translated into Ukrainian, but are crucial for deepening the discourse on contemporary art.
The first collection of the UMCA Library includes anthologies, essay compilations, and interdisciplinary research on the theme of memory, touching on topics such as museification, cultural heritage preservation, trauma, war, identity and spatial practices. This selection is intended for anyone interested in the themes of memory, sociocultural transformations, and contemporary art, as well as for researchers, students, and practitioners working in these fields.
During the initial stages of the project, a catalog of 116 books on the theory and history of contemporary art was compiled as part of a curatorial selection, which will be revisited in the further development of the collection.
Purpose of donation payment: “Charitable contribution to the UMCA Library”. By contributing, you agree to the terms of the UMCA Library’s Support Public Offer.
We ask all patrons to fill in the questionnaire in order to be able to mention them in the history of the UMCA Library.
Project team:
Polina Baitsym, Borys Filonenko — curators of the UMCA Library
MOCA NGO — Olga Balashova, Yuliia Hnat, Hnat Zabrodsky.
VMC — Valentina Klimenko, Maria Khalizeva — communications;
FORMA — Irina Miroshnikova, Alexey Petrov — architectural solutions;
Veronica Selega is a project partner.
Institutional partners: Yaroslav the Wise National Library of Ukraine.
Support and development of the field
Second iteration of the project within the framework of the strategic partnership of MOCA NGO and UNESCO, designed to provide resources for the continuous development of cultural life in Ukraine. The program is financed from the budget of the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund.
Museum / Ecosystem projects
Project aims to implement the methodology of using contemporary art as visual sources in the educational process in schools and universities.
During the course “Art in education”, teachers of educational institutions and extracurriculars will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with practical cases of the integration of contemporary Ukrainian art in various educational areas. During the course, students will learn about methods of working with visual sources when teaching social and humanitarian subjects.
Curator—Illya Levchenko.
Museum
Today, researchers of the Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage are faced with the task not only of preserving material objects, but above all of re-appropriating the Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage from Russian.
This heritage shows what propaganda art is and how it works, thereby neutralizing its effect.
The process of archiving and critical analysis of the Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage is one of the necessary methods of neutralizing the propaganda of the past and protection against modern information manipulation.
Project components:
Involvement of researchers of Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage in the creation of a joint unified archive of documentation of objects of architecture and monumental art.
Placement of the archive in the Easy DB database of art collections of the Max Planck Institute for Art History.
Involvement of Ukrainian and international scientists in the unbiased study and critical understanding of the Ukrainian Soviet cultural heritage.
Support and development of the field
UEAF + The Andy Warhol Foundation.
We became one of the first organisations they chose to support outside the USA.
Thanks to their backing, we established the first three-month stipend programme of UEAF and supported 25 artists and cultural professionals.
UEAF + The Teiger Foundation
The project was realised in the vacant halls of the museum, which, since February 24th, 2022, have been devoid of their usual exhibits from the permanent collection. The exhibition was curated by Katya Libkind.
Throughout 2022, a group of male artists who remained in Kyiv assisted the museum in responding to the challenges of wartime, especially in recovering from the missile attack on October 10th, 2022. This situation fostered a level of engagement within the group that would have been utterly impossible under other circumstances. Throughout the year, all participants sought connections with each other, the museum, and reality itself.
The projects of each artist reflect upon the events of this war, their connection to previous wars, the fate of museums during a full-scale invasion, and the history of the Khanenko Museum intertwined with the history of the city, the entire country, and global art history as a whole.
Ecosystem projects
The MOCA NGO, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture
and Information Policy of Ukraine (MCIP), announced a Ukrainian cultural initiative in Europe in February 2023. Its mission is to bring Ukraine out of the cultural blackout globally and unveil Ukraine’s artistic heritage as a significant value for the European cultural community.
The initiative’s first major project will be a series of extensive exhibitions of Ukrainian art, created in cooperation with some of Europe’s most renowned museums. At the heart of these exhibitions are artistic masterpieces from seven state museums of Ukraine, in combination with exhibits from European museums. These combined displays highlight numerous not always apparent narratives and parallels from the histories of items, artistic phenomena, and figures. Additional work is underway on a multi-year multidisciplinary programme in Europe.
The next step in the program’s development was the workshop titled “Ukrainian Cultural Heritage in Europe: Dissemination, Preservation, and Inclusion”, which took place on April 21, 2023, in Vienna. This event resulted from a collaboration with the Art History department of Universität Wien. The main topic was Ukrainian artistic heritage, its significance in the European context, and the importance of its preservation.
Ecosystem projects
UA View guide was established in partnership with Ukrainian Institute, as part of the programme Ukraine Everywhere.
We create an unusual cultural guide designed to show the contribution of Ukrainians in the globalised world.
This project has a beginning but it has no end. Over the coming years we will be expanding our guide with more stories not only about artists, but also about athletes, scientists, inventors, writers and other renowned personalities.
Project organizer: MOCA NGO
Project team: Lidiia Apollonova, Olga Balashova, Yuliia Hnat, Valya Klymenko, Illya Zabolotnyi.
Ecosystem projects
MOCA NGO, together with Architectural Studio ФОРМА, developed the project of co-living for artists Emergency Art Shelter.
Military ammunition protects a soldier; the dugout is a shelter for them. An artists’ ammunition is their space for creative journeys; a weapon is their work. Thousands of artists all around Ukraine were forced to leave their studios and homes by the threat to their lives. They still carry their weapons, it’s nonsense to fight against occupiers without a secure place to be and to work—the same as to send a soldier to battle without a bulletproof vest. Our goal is to protect artists with fortified walls and bring back their ammunition; to unite them in safe shelters and provide them with conditions for work. More—at the Emergency Art Shelter presentation.
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«MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART»,
2020—2025