Alexandra Exter's Avant-Garde: Kyiv Period

EXTER.Live

October 22, 2021  at 7.30 pm  Mystetsky Arsenal

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RODOVID Publishing House, with the support of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, is creating their project: Alexandra Exter's Avant-Garde: Kyiv Period. This project revolves around the publishing of the monograph in Ukrainian about Alexandra Exter, a prominent and symbolic Ukrainian Avant-Garde artist. To introduce this publication, RODOVID will present EXTER.Live, a challenging, interdisciplinary, and bold project, mirroring Exter’s methods and work.

EXTER.Live is an immersive dance performance inhabiting the striking Mystetsky Arsenal. It incorporates contemporary dance, fashion design, live music, and video. The installation begins in the ticket hall, weaves through each gallery of the expansive Mystetsky Arsenal and concludes with a press conference describing RODOVID’s book on Alexandra Exter. This installation coincides with the museum’s Furomarennia exhibition, which plots the Ukrainian avant-garde, featuring artists like Alexandra Exter, Anatolii Petrytsky, Vadym Meller, and Kazimir Malevich.

Utilizing Exter’s life and collection as a jumping off point, the various disciplines woven together in this installation aim to reimagine her work through modern lenses. The fashion design, choreography, and composition each place Exter’s themes in dialogue with a contemporary context, seeking not to replicate her work, but to mold it into an evolved variation.

The show is comprised of an international cast of ten dancers, bridging performers from Kyiv and New York City. These performers will be presented as ‘living exhibits’ inhabiting the gallery space; they are presented for consumption in a similar way as the paintings adorning the walls. The dancing will both precede the audience’s entrance and succeed their departure to demonstrate the performer’s role as a ‘living exhibit.’

Well-known Kyiv based designer Fedir Vozianov, known for his conceptual collections at the intersection of avant-garde art and fashion, has created a unique collection of dresses-paintings for EXTER.Live, which will serve as costumes, scenography, and movement inspiration. Lidia Zakharchenko (Zahara clothing brand) has similarly designed a limited collection of hats for the performance.

The performance will be filmed, so that the ephemeral experience may be digitally captured and available to be shared with a larger audience. Anatolii Sachivko, founder of Kyiv based Apace Crew and director, choreographer, and cinematographer will serve as videographer for the project.