Gunpowder art

Donetsk’s foundation “Isolation. A platform for cultural initiatives” jointly with the Chinese artists Cai Guo-Qiang has presented an art project “Cai Guo-Qiang: 1,040 meters below ground.”

Working on a local level and using local industrial material is the peculiar feature of the recently opened foundation “Isolation. A platform for cultural initiatives.” At the same time the works of the “Isolation” target global dimension. The project “Cai Guo-Qiang: 1,040 meters below ground,” which was timed to Miner’s Day is specifically of this kind. The topic of mining is the art project’s central motif.

Miners are often reluctant to speak about themselves or their work. Their hands are so dark that they cannot be washed clean. An 18-year boy who entered a mine will leave it as a gray-haired man, his face covered with wrinkles. The miners’ faces will tell you why they go there and how hard their labor is. Cai Guo-Qiang chose to draw portraits of miners for his joint project with the foundation “Isolation” after visiting a Donetsk mine last spring. He has been working for all this time together with the local artists to create 27 “Monuments on Shoulders.” This is the title of the series of gunpowder portraits of miners of the coal and salt mines, with the destinies of the heroes distinctly seen in their faces. It is quite symbolical that the pictures have been “burnt,” as drawing with gunpowder, the artist was playing with fire, like a miners play with danger when they descend. The canvases are exhibited in huge frames, within which portraits of Soviet leaders used to be placed, and heaps of salt and anthracite have been put beneath, so to see the portraits you had to force your way through them.

The installations have started the foundation’s joint project with the Chinese artist. Within the framework of this project it is also planned to launch the art book of the Ukrainian artist Pavlo Makov, Donroza, screen a newsreel, hold bicycle action, as well as educational lectures.

Viktoria IVANOVA, organizer of the project “Cai Guo-Qiang: 1,040 meters beneath the ground,” “Isolation. A platform of cultural initiatives” foundation:

“Donetsk’s cultural development was quite marginal. The main accent was made on industry. Culture in this region should not be developed following the initiative from above, rather the initiative should be taken by the residents of the region. This will be followed by the most important factor, uniting. Donetsk’s populace is politicized and divided into social cells. That is why we involved in the work on our project the local artists and volunteers, who helped Cai Guo-Qiang to create the pictures.”

Cai GUO-QIANG, artist (China–the US):

“Many people have worked on the project.”

Pavlo MAKOV, artist (Ukraine):

“No art is able to provoke, startle or frighten a person in the way life does. We always lose to life. But there is a different kind of art. In his Nobel Prize speech Joseph Brodsky said: ‘Probably, we will not be able to save the world, but we can save individuals.’ Apparently, art is aimed at a person, who can be saved. Social Realism had overrated ambitions, but art does not change the world, it reflects it to some extent and helps one to survive.”

Fabio CAVALUCCI, head of the Center of Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw, Poland):

“I will seem a Utopian to you, when I say that art can save the world. At least it is able to change our lives and way of thinking. And the world is what we cognize with the help of a thought. Cai Guo-Qiang is an artist able to change the world. His projects make it possible for incompatible things, the world, and universe to interact – and create impossible projects. Therefore I think that art is able to change one’s thoughts, therefore it is able to change the world.”