Sasha Kurmaz
Contemplating the Empathy of Others
23 November 2024 – 9 February 2025
Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg
Opening
Saturday, 23 November 2024 – 3 pm
Performances
Sunday, 24.11.2024 & 09.02.2025 – 3 pm
Artist Tour
Monday, 2 December 2024 – 5 pm
Guided tour through the exhibition with Sasha Kurmaz
Sasha Kurmaz, Contemplating the Empathy of Others, Exhibition views Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg 2024 – Photos: Dirk Eisermann
Photos of the exhibition opening and performance: Dirk Eisermann, Lena Kunz und Marita Landgraf
A project by Asortymentna kimnata & Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg.
In cooperation with the Hamburg Chamber Ballet
Ensemble: Ihor Khomyshchak, Viktoriia Miroshyna, Alisa Nikitina, Vladyslav Bondar, Oleksiy Grishun, Veronika Hordina; Artistic direction: Edvin Revazov; Management: Isabelle Rohlfs
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‘Contemplating the Empathy of Others’ is an artistic reflection on the changing perceptions in Ukrainian and German society during the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War. The exhibition shows a depiction of the consequences of the war, but also creates a universal place of remembrance. The artist Sasha Kurmaz provides insights into the immediate living conditions of the Ukrainian population. He documents, comments on and questions the value of human life, the right to selfdetermination and freedom. Since the 2010s, Kurmaz has repeatedly addressed the role of authorities, political violence, discrimination, the growing military conflict in the east of the country and the tangible threat, but also resistance and solidarity, in public interventions and political manifestations.
‘Contemplating the Empathy of Others’ invites visitors to engage with the themes of empathy, resistance and remembrance. The exhibition combines visual, physically tangible and auditory approaches and evokes individual associations in visitors, depending on how personally affected they are. The composer Maryana Klochko has developed a new sound piece especially for the exhibition, a kind of eerie soundtrack that can be felt inside and seems to hover over everything like a dark cloud. And yet the mood clears from time to time, allowing comforting glimmers of hope to shine through.
The series ‘Red Horse’ is an ongoing series of collages that Sasha Kurmaz began during the ‘Work Room’ residency of Asortymentna kimnata. In it, he explores the social spaces and real landscapes in Ukraine since February 2022. Each collage is a reflection on the relationship between structural decay and collective trauma, while questioning how ruins become powerful symbols of fear and resilience.
Viewers are invited to follow the visual diary entries – composed of photographs by the artist as well as drawings and found objects from the media – and to adopt different perspectives in order to question conventional narratives of time and destruction. Sasha Kurmaz explores the influence of war and the everyday sight of destruction on people in Ukraine and their interpersonal relationships. In doing so, he explores the capacities of art in comprehending a new order of things in a different world that operates in the situation of the ongoing apocalypse.[1] The performance ‘Untitled’ unfolds in the context of the collages. It goes beyond the traditional forms of commemorating civilians injured or killed in war and considers the movement of the body in space as a compassionate gesture – a new, experimental form of tracing and remembering. The performance was created in 2024 as part of the Antonin Artaud Fellowship and premiered in a partially destroyed office building in Kyiv. During the exhibition period, the performance ‘Untitled’ will be shown on 24 November 2024 and on 9 February 2025 at the Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg in cooperation with the Hamburg Chamber Ballet.
We invite both German and Ukrainian society to an open discussion about the connections and challenges of empathy, distance and time. In this way, we hope to share and preserve ways of understanding, compassion and remembrance.
The project ‘Contemplating the Empathy of Others’ is a cooperation between Künstlerhaus and Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg and Asortymentna kimnata and includes a solo exhibition by Kyiv-based artist Sasha Kurmaz as well as a joint publication. Asortymentna kimnata is a gallery and project space in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine), a centre for art residencies in KhataMaysternya and abroad for the promotion of contemporary art.
[1] See Tatiana Kochubinska in: Sasha Kurmaz. Living with the fear of being harmed by other humans, Fellowship catalogue 2022, published by Künstlerhaus Lauenburg.
Exhibition performance
Sasha Kurmaz, Contemplating the Empathy of Others, Performance in cooperation with the Hamburg Chamber Ballet, Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg 2024 – Photos: Lena Kunz
Thanks to the Antonin Artaud Scholarship, Danylo Zubkov and Lora Konup for supporting Sasha Kurmaz in the development of the choreography and the presentation of the performance in Kyiv.
“The Red Horse” is the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/2024 winning project, was co-produced by Images Vevey and premiered at the Biennale Images Vevey 2024.
The exhibition with Sasha Kurmaz is sponsored by
The project was made possible through the support of the RAZOM/RHIZOM programme, within the framework of the “Civil Society Cooperation” initiative, organised by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. The programme is coordinated by the Ukrainian Institute in Germany and Artsvit Gallery.
