A number of galleries and museums will open their doors to visitors, and the festival will present a number of other events – from a competition for the best digital work of the NFT to a series of lecture blocks with Czech and foreign guests. PRAGUE ART WEEK will take place from September 9 to 15, as part of the accompanying program, it will focus on current topics of the art scene – NFT, art collecting and how the contemporary art scene works in New York. Ukrainian gallerist Maryna Shcherbenko has also accepted an invitation to the festival, and she will speak about the preservation of Ukrainian culture and heritage.
“We want to make Prague visible on the artistic map of the world. here to welcome interesting personalities from the world of art and to prepare an exceptional event for the artists and residents of Prague, which will take place throughout the city,” says its director Lenka Bakeš about the first year of PRAGUE ART WEEK. So where to go? The program is mostly concentrated in Prague 1 and 7. The festival center, where the lectures and other programs will take place, will be located on the New Stage of the National Theater for a week, and Galerie Kodl and Kvalitář are also involved. The Chemistry Gallery, Trafo Gallery, Holešovická Schacht and many others are preparing a program for the artistically strong Prague 7. If you like to discover normally inaccessible places, go to the pop-up exhibition in the Vanguard building under construction by PSN (Prague 12).
Where to go according to festival director Lenka Bakeš? “I don’t want to favor anyone, but I would recommend readers of Harper’s Bazaar to come to the Superstudio on Nové scena on Tuesday the 13th for a talk with Maria Tomanová and other great guests who will end the performance of Luka Essender. In addition, I recommend bypassing large institutions or going to the Artefin complex on the weekend. During the week, on the other hand, you can orientate yourself according to the individual city districts, where smaller galleries and off spaces are open, there you have a great opportunity to talk to the galleries and the artists themselves.”
Highlights include, for example, the opportunity to look into the Czech Havrlant Art Collection for the very first time – through a group exhibition called HAC #1, which, like the collection of Kateřina and Jakub Havrlantová, focuses on Eastern private young authors and contemporary progressive art from Central and Europe. The video art The lost case by Jindřich Chalupecký Prize winner Roman Štětina, which is also part of the Havrlant Art Collection, will be shown on Saturday in the Ponrepo cinema in the presence of the author. In Prague, you can also leave a message through Federico Díaz’s experimental installation “On the Mountain”.
Among the main foreign guests of the art week is the Ukrainian gallerist Maryna Shcherbenko from the Shcherbenko Art Center in Kyiv. On Thursday, September 15, her lecture will take place in the festival center about the challenges and difficulties that the art scene of Ukraine faces after the Russian invasion and how to overcome them. Also imagine some of the projects he takes up after the outbreak of war.
We asked Maryna a few questions, especially one very difficult one, namely how dramatically will the art scene in Ukraine change and what can be expected from it?
“War changes everything. The art scene is changing. Many of my colleagues and artists have gone abroad. It was from abroad that we started the process of contemporary Ukrainian art entering the world scene. The necessity of this integration and the insurmountable obstacles associated with it were previously discussed at length. And now it’s a necessity. This integration will affect both the development of current art institutions in Ukraine and the creation of new ones. The artists will be known not only on the local art scene. I must also mention the influence of art on how Ukraine is perceived abroad. After all, art has an incredible semantic power, and therefore we must handle it carefully and approach it responsibly before ourselves and before the world.”
And which of the contemporary Ukrainian artists would Maryna like to draw our attention to? “I can’t single out just one. As a curator, I pay particular attention to women artists who are part of the exhibitions at the Shcherbenko Art Centre. Why is that so? Of course, it’s thematically close to me, but that’s not the real reason. It’s about the professional drive that comes when I work with extremely interesting and multi-talented people.” Maryna mentions, for example, Vlada Ralko and her paintings, Maria Proshkovská, the author of video performances, and Maria Kulikovská, who works mainly with her own experiences from the occupied Crimea . “Women in art in Ukraine are very expressive now, their speech is confident and convincing, and they easily move from one subject to another, from one medium to another. Each one is completely different, but all incredibly strong,” adds Maryna.
