Burned Archives – Art Week

Burned Archives

This Polish Gallery Asymetria exhibition
25.05.2019- 02.06.2019

This Polish Gallery Asymetria exhibition features Nikita Kadan, Zbigniew Libera, Yuri Mechitov, Paweł Pierściński and Wacław Ropiecki. The exhibition digs into the past to examine historical artistic events and what cultural and political phenomenon have on artists and their work. The exhibit is divided into three categories: 1) Destruction (burning), 2) Archivization (preservation) and 3) Creation. 20th Century Polish, Ukranian, and Armenian-Georgian photographers and artists, both dead and alive, with and without their work challenge the spectator’s assumptions about art and its  preservation. The show concludes with an Armenian-language installation by Zbigniew Libera.

“Why do artists burn their archives? Is this a sacrifice that artists make in certain circumstances? Or perhaps the destroying of archives and historical objects is a national and political phenomenon, for example as a result of a revolution in a long-occupied country. Rather than offering straightforward answers to those and other questions, the exhibition creates conditions of visibility for the spectator. Allowing them to see and ask questions about the
images creates a means of cognition.”