Shared Home.Shared Fight’s rescheduled opening will take place on June 27 at 16:00 at Arti et Amicitiae
VATAHA is postponing the opening of its art exhibition Shared Home.Shared Fight from June 20 to June 27, 16:00 due to a russian-curated exhibition scheduled at the Arti et Amicitiae space (Rokin 112, 1012 LB Amsterdam) for a parallel opening.
The parallel exhibition, Backup.Vavilov, spotlights the work of Soviet biologist Nikolai Vavilov who fought to protect biodiversity amid Stalin’s genocidal regime in the 1930s and 40s in the Soviet Union. Our issue is not with the biologist himself – who dedicated his life to preserving agricultural biodiversity, and was ultimately persecuted and left to die in Soviet prison – but far more with the exhibition’s explicit focus on the victimization of russians and the weaponization of food scarcity in russia, when the Holodomor was simultaneously devastating Ukraine.
The Holodomor was a human-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s, and this genocide was officially recognized by The Netherlands in 2023. We are stunned that Backup.Vavilov invokes narratives of war and weaponized food scarcity without drawing parallels to russia’s current war of aggression against Ukraine. It is a striking omission to not reference how russia continues to weaponize food today by starving prisoners of war and civilians, obstruct grain exports from Ukraine, and use hunger as a tool of coercion in global diplomacy.
In the two weeks since we have learned about Backup.Valilov’s simultaneous exhibition, we have had very intense, painful discussions between our artist team, our exhibition team, our board and advisors, and Arti et Amicitiae space. We explained the political insensitivity and absolute impossibility of such a parallel exhibition to Arti et Amicitiae several times. We have also explained in detail how those blind spots perpetuate an untrue and harmful narrative about russia’s responsibility in present and Soviet war crimes and genocide involving food scarcity.
We also spoke with Backup.Vavilov’s curator and some of the artists in person on June 16. The artists expressed an unintentional lack of awareness regarding the context surrounding the exhibition. However, both Shared Home.Shared Fight’s and Backup.Vavilov’s curators and artists stated that neither party wanted to reschedule or relocate their respective exhibition.
Regardless of these conversations, at a time where Ukrainian art is being destroyed and artists are being killed by russia’s armed forces, we decided we refuse to silence our artists’ voices, and risk the message of Shared Home.Shared Fight to go unseen. We have come to the conclusion that we will be staying in the exhibition space.
Not because we are satisfied with such a pairing, not because we tolerate it or wish for it in any shape or form, but because we refuse for our Ukrainian voices and Dutch allies to be erased. We refuse to give up our presence in this prominent Amsterdam art space, especially if doing so would leave a problematic narrative, curated without Ukrainian context, unchallenged.
Instead, we have negotiated a separation, as much as is possible within one space, with that exhibition. That, as well as several practical reasons is why we have made a decision to shift Shared Home.Shared Fight’s opening to 27.06, at 16:00. We did not want a simultaneous opening.
We thus call for our communities in the Netherlands to come and support our artist and exhibition team next week. We are thrilled to invite you to be the first ones to see the work combinations on a theme of a home to protect of Anna Kakhiani and Els van der Graaf, Hanna Hrabarska and Edwin van Gelder, Katya Motyleva and Esmee van Zeeventer, Sophia Bulgakova and Ymer Marinus.
We have an diverse lineup of parallel events through the exhibition period:
- July 4 at 16:30 – Coffee in a Shared Home: Q/A with our artists
- July 10 – Poetry and music evening with Daria Lysenko
- July 18 at 16:00 – Panel discussion “Shared Fight? In Modern Europe” on the theme of what a shared duty to protect Europe mean for the people living here
- July 24 at 12:00 – Zine-making workshop with Edwin Van Gelder and Hanna Hrabarska
We really hope to see you soon, on 27.06 at 16:00 at Rokin 112, 1012 LB Amsterdam!