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Crossing the Line: Under Mud GFT

29 September, 2019

‘Under Mud’ refers to the uses of mud in post-soviet spa resorts – sanatoriums – as a material for healing and to promote well-being. For this screening Ukrainian Curator, Alexandra Tryanova and Glasgow based artist, Susannah Stark, have selected work by women filmmakers and artists from Ukraine.

Here, mud is a metaphor for a time of socio-political change in Ukraine, ongoing since the early 1990s with the end of the Soviet Union, a time during which video art could be said to have experienced a burst of activity. This time of transition brought about challenges for the whole society as its citizens entered into a period of political reformation, particularly affecting those who identified as female, who were engaged in an ongoing struggle to redefine their subjectivity in public and private life. The selected works tackle the oppressive gender politics of post-soviet states and show how artists have undermined historical stereotypes through the communicative possibilities of the body. The programme underlines the role of artists’ performativity as a key tool for expression often due to the difficult economic conditions in which the work was produced. Mud can be obscuring, but also regenerating. In Oksana Chepelyk’s Chronicles of Fortinbras the artist notes “we must accept the past in all its plenitude. perhaps then the future will no longer horrify us”. This call to accept the past is the point of departure for this screening: to go ‘under mud’ and traverse its depths for the purpose of chronicling but also for taking tentative steps towards healing and change.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with curators Alexandra Tryanova and Susannah Stark.

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GFT 12 Rose Street, G3 6RB

This section: Cinema