In war-torn eastern Ukraine, artists often feel isolated and alone.
They are scattered across the half-empty towns, affected by Russia’s war that started in 2014. The area has little, if any, art life. It seems to only liven up when creatives from big cities like Kyiv or Kharkiv come to Donbas for guest residencies or temporary exhibits.
Vitalii Matukhno, a local from Lysychansk, a city in Luhansk Oblast 735 kilometers east of Kyiv, says he liked events with visiting artists but the absence of the local art scene was always striking.
“Even if we had something here, there hadn’t been any discussion about it or acknowledgement,” Matukhno told the Kyiv Post.
Matukhno decided to bring together the spread-out artists and give them a platform to showcase their work. That’s how his pop-up gallery emerged in 2020.
Called Gareleya Neotodryosh, which means “a gallery that cannot be torn off,” in Russian, it travels to damaged structures through Donbas, throwing pop-up exhibits and creating a new community within the region.
Symbolic start
The gallery’s first exhibit took place in a symbolic place, under the bridge between the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk that was blown up by Russian-led militants in 2014 and reconstructed by Ukrainian authorities in 2016.
Local artists, many meeting for the first time, glued printed pictures to an unfinished room in the underpass.
When explaining the unnamed project to the group, Matukhno stumbled over his words, mistakenly saying gareleya rather than galereya (“gallery” in Russian). The twisted name of the initiative was born.
Several days after the exhibit was put up, an artist who noticed the gallery added his own pictures to the walls, inspired to share his work by others.
Matukhno considered it another proof his region needed a platform for creatives to display their art. It pushed him to write up a manifest for the project and launch an Instagram account so that other artists in the east can discover his initiative.
“And it just took off,” Matukhno says.
Uniting artists
Since the launch a year ago, the pop-up has carried out 13 exhibitions, spotlighting nearly 100 local artists.
The gallery travels all across the region each time arriving at a new location. Its exhibits were held at a two-story abandoned house deep in the woods, an abandoned bowling alley in Mariupol city, a shot-up television station in Lysychansk and more.
Contemporary artist Yehor Gordotko was showcasing his own exhibit in a destroyed building on the outskirts of his native city Kramatorsk when someone told him about the gallery for the first time.
“It really resonated, their method of work,” Gordotko told the Kyiv Post. “Vitalik (Matukhno) and I have similar opinions on the crisis of art institutions in our regions.”
Few spaces show quality art in the east. Small towns usually have one state museum that showcases old, permanent exhibits about the history of the town and the war in the east.
“These museums in small villages look the same, it’s just boring,” Gordotko says. “There isn’t any art that brings discussion.”
Unlike the state museums that often stick to conservative approaches, Gareleya Neotodryosh, welcomes bold art on all topics.
One of the exhibits showcased the work of Zhenya Tramvay, an openly gay artist whose pieces focus on queer themes, expressively. His work would have been censored by a regular museum, according to Matukhno.
Gordotko says it feels special to be able to start discussions by displaying his work, as well as to be recognized within his own region.
He also says he was surprised to see how many artists there were around. He believes that the project is healing some of the broken ties within the community.
“I felt that the gallery became a platform for the uniting of those who live here, work here and create,” Gordotko says.
And that community doesn’t exclude those who live in the occupied territories, including cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“If we deny ourselves from the people that live in those territories, then we are consciously not considering them as part of Ukraine,” Matukhno says. “Then what are we fighting for?”
Instead of cutting Ukrainians stuck in occupied areas, Matukhno wants to connect people.
“Those people have the gallery as a path to be a part of Ukraine, to show their work, and to essentially prove that they exist,” Matukhno says.
Connecting locals
Gareleya Neotodryosh has been a breakthrough project not only for artists, but regular locals in Donbas.
One of their exhibits was put up outside of a Nova Poshta private postal office in Lysychansk. “A gallery that people would accidentally end up at when picking their packages and mail,” Matukhno says.
It took many locals by surprise.
One of them was an internally displaced woman who had lost her regular life after she fled occupied Luhansk and settled in Lysychansk.
“She said she had been in a state of constant transit, not paying attention to anything,” Matukhno says, as her “life had become trivial.”
She happened to be near the post office when she noticed a photograph of her home, Luhansk, that she couldn’t return to. Matukno says she stopped and burst into tears. “It really touched her.”
Matukho says that many passersby at first didn’t understand what their project was about, but “they were happy that they happened to experience it.”
The initiative’s exhibits are especially valuable for the local youth in rural eastern Ukraine. One of them is Valeriia Kovtun, 18, who comes from the small town of Rubizhne, close to Lysychansk. She says that throughout her whole life she has interacted with a meager number of people, struggling to find like-minded friends.
But Gareleya Neotodryosh opened up a whole new world for her.
“I started to come to Lysychansk more often,” Kovtun told the Kyiv Post, “started to participate more, met so many new people.”
Kovtun volunteered to help the initiative with setting up exhibits. She has now visited at least seven exhibits, traveling around and discovering her own region.
The gallery once visited Kovtun’s native Rubizhne, showcasing art at an abandoned movie theater. Kovtun was surprised when strangers other than her friends arrived and discussed the displayed art.
“The locals were surprised that Rubizne had something (happening),” Kovtun says.
Though initially founded to spotlight and unite artists within the east, Gareleya Neotodryosh now wants to show the rest of Ukraine that there is a thriving art community in the east. One of the ways they plan to achieve that is by launching a printed zine with locals’ art and distributing it throughout the country.
“We want to have more people know about our project, our region, our people,” Matukhno says.
