The exhibition Marché is a commentary on the situation in Ukraine where work — neither protected nor guaranteed by the state — often serves as a means to overcome a social reality defined by numerous barriers. In the process of seeking self-realization people try to discover ways to avoid submission to authority in order to preserve their freedom when values beyond money come into play. Such efforts — having hardly been diminished over what is an extended period of time within a context of global transition and crisis — require a certain level of creativity. The industry worker is obliged to produce systematically, constrained to automatisms that become evident as a result of monotonous activity and dependence on machines. The worker as a creative actor in society is not unlike an artist maneuvering between rules legislated by the powers that be, navigating a life/work balance that rarely exists as a delible line: life often becomes the subject of work and vice versa. Although Marché focuses its perspective narrowly, addressing the situation of Ukrainian industry workers traveling abroad for employment opportunities, it implies the broader implications of this situation as it can be observed in other countries, each with its particularities both within and without the realities of active hostile conflicts.

Nataliya Ilchuk works predominantly in the medium of film and video. She was born in Lviv in 1985. She graduated from Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France in 2020 after having studied cinema in Kyiv, Ukraine and Warsaw, Poland. Since autumn 2022 she is a PhD candidate at CY Cergy Paris University, France where she is currently developing an artistic research thesis in the form of an auto-ethnography. Her research explores the limitations of artistic freedom while attempting to establish links between authenticity in cinema and the numerous forms of external and internal pressures with particular attention to censorship and self-censorship. Nataliya Ilchuk participated in the Brno House of Art‘s Artist in Residence program in cooperation with Vasulka Kitchen Brno in 2022 during which she developed her current exhibition project.

Curators: Monika Szűcsová and Viktória Pardovičová

23. 8. - 27. 10. 2023

Gallery talk with artist: 23. 8. 2023, 5PM

Guided tour with curators: 26. 9. 2023, 5PM FB EVENT