What is art’s role in the actual conflict? Die Kuratorin Marta Dziewańska im Gespräch.

Die Forschungen über Ambivalenzen und das Ringen um Haltung während der Zeit des Ersten und des Zweiten Weltkriegs dringen in Ausstellungen vor, während die Zeitzeug*innen aussterben. Je näher sie an die Zeitgeschichte der Wende-Ereignisse um 1989 ragen, desto mehr wird sichtbar, dass das «Ende vom Kalten Krieg» und friedliche Revolutionen Mehrheitsentscheidungen sind, deren Ausgangslage im gesamtpolitischen Kräfteverhältnis globalen Massstabs nie stabil ist, und dass Neutralität kein Freipass für Indifferenz ist, wenn es um mehr geht als das Abwägen zwischen wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Interessen. Es ist weder trivial, aus welcher Haltung und in welcher Zusammensetzung kulturelle Initiativen und Einrichtungen ihre Arbeit machen, noch wie pro­duktiv sie mit lokalen Öffentlichkeiten in Verbindung stehen und durch weltweite Kontakte in die Lage versetzt sind, mit Bereitschaft für Selbstkritik und begründeten Veränderungen der Ausrichtung verantwortungsbewusst zu handeln.

Mitte der 1980er-Jahre reisen Schweizer*innen nach Moskau, um Ilya Kabakov, Pavel Pepperstein, Victor Pivovarov und andere Künstler*innen zu treffen, die damals im Untergrund arbeiteten. Diese Initiativen machten sie in der westlichen Welt bekannt und führten dazu, dass Werke in Schweizer Sammlungen eingingen. Zwischen 2009 und 2011 fanden unter dem Titel Art Histories in East-Central Europe after 1989: Unfolding Narratives eine Reihe von Travelling Seminars in Bukarest, Tallinn und Brno statt. Beat Wyss wurde die Möglichkeit eröffnet, in der Peer Group mitzuwirken. In der Folge konnten Stipendiat*innen des Schweizerischen Instituts für Kunstwissenschaft an diesen Diskussionen teilnehmen. 2011 zeigte das Kunstmuseum Bern die Sammlung von Arina Kowner unter dem Titel Passion Bild. Russische Kunst seit 1970. 2017 setzten das Kunstmuseum Bern und das Zentrum Paul Klee gemeinsam die Ausstellung Die Revolution ist tot. Lang lebe die Revolution! um.

Seit 2018 arbeitet Marta Dziewańska als Kuratorin am Kunstmuseum Bern. Ab 2007 war sie als Kuratorin und Head of Research am Museum für Moderne Kunst in Warschau tätig, das 2005 gegründet wurde und 2017 kuratorische Beraterin der documenta 14 in Athen und Kassel. Für die HKB-Zeitung hat Marta Dziewańska ein schriftliches Interview gegeben.

We reach you during the process of installing the exhibition Vivre Notre Temps! Bonnard, Valloton and the Nabis, with works from the Hahnloser/Jaeggli Collection before it returns to Villa Flora in Winterthur. What are the specifics of this show in the spectrum of your curatorial work?
Marta Dziewańska: It is an interesting case study for me. It is an exhibition about friendship, about the need for artis­tic community, exchange and dialogue. It is a show about how crucial these thing were for the Nabis artists (Künstlergruppe, die 1888 in Paris im Umkreis der Académie Julien gegründet wurde , Anm. d. Red.), but also how generally important it all is as a starting point. The group did not exist for long, did not develop any clear style, but the impact of that time in the later work of each of its members is undeniable. Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton… these are obviously the most prominent turn-of-the-century artists. Another important element is that the show concentrates on the ways in which the artists still working with the medium of classical representation were slowly turning towards abstraction. It is truly fascinating to see how the idiom is changing and how the artists were actively looking for new forms of expression. The visitors will see the traditional themes (landscapes, portraits, still lives…), but it is apparent that the artists were not interested in simple representation, not even in just painting their impressions. They were experimenting formally within traditional painting.

So if you are asking about how this show relates to my previous work or my interests, I think it is exactly this: rather than simply looking at/showing “big names” in art history, I prefer to see the crucial impact of art community and exchange. Also, rather than the acclaimed masterpieces or established names, what I always prefer to look at are their tricky moments of change, transformation, and hesitation. Moments of suspension, very risky moments. For me they are synonymous for any truly creative act.

In 2019/2020 you curated the exhibition Things Fall Apart. Swiss Art from Böcklin to Vallotton with works from the collection of Kunstmuseum Bern that embraced and accentuated the fundamental changes in the understanding of man and nature at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The views on art were shifted to the ways in which artists dealt with insecurities. How did the idea and concept for this show evolve?
What interests me in curatorial work is the attempt to understand the direct relation of paintings to reality. So far, I have mostly worked with contemporary artists – with whom I have shared this reality, and our projects always dealt with it in a critical way: they commented, complicated and tried to diagnose. I think that this is exactly what I am looking for in working with a historical collection: I am interested in how artists relate to their contemporaneity, how they treat tradition, how they transgress it, how they dare to speak on their own terms. What fascinates me even more, however, is how paintings from the 18th, 19th or the beginning of the 20th century can actively (and accurately) comment on and diagnose modernity. This was exactly what I tried to do when working on Things Fall Apart. Not only was it an incredible occasion for me to dig deep in the fascinating collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern, but also it was a way to better understand this place, this country, my brand-new context. Looking at it with Freudian lenses was like putting Swiss art on the psychoanalytical couch and asking questions that are not always comfortable.

During your time at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw you worked on an exhibition and a publication about the post-soviet condition that included a precise timeline of sociopolitical events between 2007 and 2013. Are you still in touch with some of the former colleagues in Warsaw and some of the artists that participated in this exhibition?
I was working at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw for eleven years and I still perceive it as my mother institution. I started there in 2007 when I was still a student and had a chance to create – in a small, initial group of enthusiasts – an institution from the very scratch. The people I worked with are sort of my Nabis community: the experience and the bunch of people that mark your way of thinking forever. The project Angry Birds organized in Warsaw and the publica­tion Post-Post Soviet? Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade were looking at the young activist scene that has arisen in the Russian art world since the beginning of the 2000s. I was very interested in the explosion of the protests in Russia that were symptomatic for a fundamental change in culture heralded by Vladimir Putin’s first election. This shift meant not only lack of artistic freedom, but also the change to a highly commercial, isolated world, financed and informed by oligarchs. My research trips to Moscow back then were extremely frustrating, but also extremely formative: I met and worked with incredible artists that were facing shrinking freedom and yet an even more urgent need for expression.

How did you get the news of the invasion into Ukraine?
I got this dry and terrified message from my partner very early in the morning saying, “It happened.” The evening before we were still thinking: no, it’s impossible, war is not the way, tanks are not a response in the 21st century, it would be mad of him, etc. And even though we have lived under the cloud of this threat for a while already, the morning of the invasion was the most surreal moment of my life.

Since then, the news of destruction, oppression, the interruption of relations, schisms running through families and groups have not stopped. What does the ongoing war mean for culture from your perspective, your professional and personal background?
I think this is a very difficult situation and I think no one should be indifferent to it. I really think this war is an act of cruel aggression and it should be resisted with all the means at our disposal. I strongly believe that the war in Ukraine is a fight for freedom, for the future of democracy, the global legal order, and respect for human rights including the right to selfdetermination. Are these not the most crucial values that organize and determine work in the field of art?

Where do you see potentials and necessities for Switzerland, especially in arts and culture (foundations, museums and universities) to conceive future projects as ways to build relations and awareness of the contemporary conditions? What are the formats and the research that you find crucial?
We are in a dynamic situation in which, however, I find it necessary to be very clear. In the face of mass killings of civilians there is no room for half-measures, in my opinion. I think that the artistic community – in Switzerland and beyond – should immediately cease any collaborations with institutions and individuals who have direct ties with Putin’s regime: this includes international projects, exhibitions, donations, and art sales. At the same time, I think that we should find ways to support artists, scholars and institutional workers in both Ukraine and Russia who fight and protest against this act of aggression – by providing funds, resources, safe spaces, and visibility to their struggle. As for the particular programmes, I think we have to formulate and create them on the go: the situation is dynamic and there are no ready schemes. But the most important thing is to not be indifferent – indifference is deadly for art.

Are there any ideas for the ways and programmes to support artists, scholars and institutional work in both Ukraine and Russia that you know about or would like to sketch an outline?
Since the war and its brutality are still going on, practical help is the most crucial. Artists, scholars and researchers are now confronted with actual war and rather than programmes, they are thinking about evacuating their works, their archives or those of their fellow artists. It is all very dramatic and is happening now. Together with my colleagues at the Kunstmuseum Bern, I am in touch with a Kiev-based NGO that has courageously been evacuating private archives since the first days of the invansion: those of the Ukrainian avant-garde or Kharkiv school of photography. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw from the first week of the war has snapped into action, creating an “institution within an institution” to help some of more than two mil­-
lion Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Poland.

What are your thoughts and wishes for research and exhibition projects that take their start from not being indifferent?
First, I think that it is necessary that other voices than bombs be heard from Ukraine. I think we should now invest in learning – from invited speakers, museum curators, art and film historians, writers, filmmakers, visual artists – about the richness and diversity of Ukrainian culture, the culture that for ages was swallowed by Russian culture in the international reception. In the broader perspective, I would again (and again and again) ask the questions about historical and modern political and cultural colonialisms. Ukraine is just this now most visible and painful example that was brought to our eyes by this mad Putin war. What does this war say about our vocabularies, about the art historical canon that we learn in schools?

To what extent does political change impact the form, medium, and distribution of visual art? What is art’s role in the actual conflict? What new art forms are being born now? What is the updated meaning of engaged art? Is it possible or even desirable to write a new art history from the perspective of the narratives that until now were seen as marginal, or only ‘local’? What have we learnt then and what are we learning now?

Die Liste der Aktionen im Zusammenhang mit der russischen Aggression gegen die Ukraine ist umfangreich: Das Museum für Moderne Kunst in Warschau veranstaltete am 15. Mai die Refugees Welcome Auction, um zwei Programme der Ocalenie-Stiftung zu unterstützen. Die deutsche Bundesregierung plant in Berlin ein Medienzentrum für Journalist*innen aus vom Krieg betroffenen Ländern wie der Ukraine, Russland oder Belarus. Schweizer Kunsthochschulen haben Gaststudierende aus der Ukraine aufgenommen. An der HKB sind es rund 20 Studierende, vor allem von der Schauspielschule in Charkiw. Die FHNW ermöglicht mit Unterstützung der Laurenz-Stiftung, dass 20 Studierende aus der Ukraine ihr Studium ein Jahr lang in der Schweiz fortsetzen können.

Als Beitrag für den Schweizer Pavillon bei der Architekturbiennale 2023 wurde das Projekt Neighbourhood von Karin Sander und Philip Ursprung nominiert. Es beschäftigt sich auf architektonischer und politischer Ebene mit der Beziehung zwischen dem Schweizer Pavillon, der 1952 von Bruno Giacometti erbaut wurde, und dem venezolanischen Pavillon, den der italienische Architekt Carlo Scarpa in unmittel­barer Nachbarschaft 1954 errichtet hat. Dieser befindet sich in nächster Nähe zum russischen Pavillon, der diesjährigen Ausgabe der Biennale di Venezia unbespielt bleibt. Die beiden für den Beitrag vorgesehenen Künstler*innen, Alexandra Sukhareva und Kirill Savchenkov, haben am 27. Februar 2022 in den sozialen Medien erklärt, dass die politische Situation in der Ukraine sie dazu veranlasst habe, zurückzutreten. «Es gibt keinen Platz für Kunst, wenn Zivilist*innen unter dem Beschuss von Raketen sterben, wenn sich ukrainische Bürger*innen in Bunkern verstecken und wenn russische Demonstrant*innen zum Schweigen gebracht werden.»

Das Jahr 2022 kann nicht zu lang sein, um kulturelle Arbeit aus einem Wertekonsens zu machen, der im Einklang mit Menschenrechten steht: Zu prüfen, worin dieser Einsatz in vorausgehenden Krisenzeiten als Leistung Einzelner und von Staaten-Gemeinschaften bestand und zu fragen, welche Schlüsse daraus in der gegenwärtigen Weltlage zu ziehen sind. Und das alles in mutiger Mitverantwortung für Zukunft und die Freiheit der Kunst unter Zurückweisung von Indifferenz aus existenziellen Gründen.