Invitation to Injustice

The exhibit, An Invitation to Australia or a One History Museum, has opened at the Contemporary Art Center, appears at first look something like a folk art display, in the sense of a personal museum game. Indeed, any more or less aesthetically gifted citizen may collect private and personal correspondence, add pages from a diary and other garbage, souvenirs from friends, a couple of favorite photo albums, and arrange all this neatly on shelves at an art gallery, along with a story about a trip one never made.

This is precisely what happened in our case. Kyiv artist Alevtyna Kakhidze tells about her illusory trip to Australia, to meet a friend, a local painter named Udo Kochler. Enlarged copies of diary pages, letters from Australia, official papers form the simple background of one story. Yet more examples of intimate conceptualism, or so it seems.

Without doubt, a document from the Australian consulate, formally refusing an entry visa, bureaucratic in format and profoundly humiliating in essence, occupies the central place in the exposition. The document is conspicuous, most vivid piece of evidence of an epoch of new iron curtains when individuality and freedom of choice, compared to the almighty regulations, are valued as low as they were before 1989-91. The notice of refusal makes one regard the whole exposition from an altogether different perspective, as though it were an aggressive social gesture. Callous rejection, glaring injustice: these are the most vivid impressions after exploring the Invitation to Australia.

There is no telling whether the author had meant it that way, but creative projects such as this one, topical and serving as a good addition to the cause of the publicist, are necessary in our day.