Online discussion
Art and Decolonial Solidarity: Institutional Politics
On 19 March at 17.00-18.30 EET
The discussion will be live streamed on Facebook
The recording of the conversation is available on VIMEO here
Participants: Yulia Krivich, Fadwa Naamna, Diana Kudaibergenova, Katarzyna Bojarska
Moderators: Ieva Astahovska, Margaret Tali
Decoloniality and solidarity are a growingly important part of discussions focusing on experiences related to various political upheavals, crises, and catastrophes, and efforts to address them. In this series of two online seminars, participants will discuss how artists and curators from Ukraine, Baltic, Middle East and Central Asia work with decoloniality and solidarity as tools for both thinking and action with a particular focus on connections, alliances, and parallels in the regional and global levels.
How do we understand decolonial solidarity? How are these concepts transferred and embodied in specific experiences, understandings, and actions? Does our solidarity differ in relation to near and the far, and if so, how? How is solidarity grounded in perspectives of the past, present, and future? How can it be activated through art, activism, and artistic research? The participants in these discussions will address the conditions and limits of decolonial solidarity, drawing various examples and experiences, while focusing on both working with the legacies of the colonial past and today's political violence, wars and upheavals.
The first webinar will focus on the ideological and practical manifestations and limitations of decolonial solidarity and its operation in the context of art institutions and the structures around them. How can solidarity be used in artistic practice? How can art be used to build connections and alliances with those affected by systemic injustices, violations of fundamental rights, war, genocide, humanitarian and ecological disasters?
The online seminar series is a part of the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts”, which focuses on uneasy relations between past and present and their entangled nature in the 20th and 21st centuries This series is also part of the Lysiak-Rudnytsky Ukrainian Studies Programme held by the Ukrainian Institute and Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation with financial support of the International Renaissance Foundation, as well as the State Culture Capital Foundation in Latvia.
Publicity image:
Installation view of In the Presence of Absence. Ahmet Öğüt, Bakunin’s Barricade, 2015–2020. With works of Else Berg, Timo Demollin, Marlene Dumas, Pieter Engels, Nan Goldin, Käthe Kollwitz, Jan Th. Kruseman, Kazimir Malevich, and PINK de Thierry.
ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS
Yulia Krivich
My presentation takes as its starting point two curatorial projects I co-developed: Solidarny Dom Kultury “Słonecznik”at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the forum and exhibition “There Is Nothing Solid About Solidarity” at the M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (2025). Both projects approached solidarity not as a stable political concept but as a contested and fragile practice shaped by geopolitical inequalities, institutional structures, and the lived experiences of artists and communities. Through exhibitions, discussions, and collaborations across different regions, they examined how solidarity is mobilized, negotiated, and sometimes instrumentalized within contemporary art contexts.
Building on these curatorial experiences, the presentation connects them to my ongoing artistic research on the Soviet concept of “Friendship of Nations.” By working with archives, visual symbols, and historical narratives of socialist internationalism, I investigate how earlier models of solidarity were constructed and how their ideological legacy continues to influence contemporary imaginaries of alliance across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The talk asks how artistic and curatorial practices can critically engage with these inherited frameworks while opening space for more situated and decolonial forms of solidarity today.
Yulia Krivich is a visual artist, researcher, and curator whose practice operates at the intersection of art, activism, collective practices, and decolonial critique. She is currently a PhD fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Between 2022 and 2024, she co-founded the Sunflower Solidarity Community Center at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. This grassroots initiative is widely recognized in Poland and abroad for its unique synthesis of urgent activist solidarity and artistic activities.
Fadwa Naamna
In this presentation, I reflect on solidarity within public art institutions and ask: What responsibilities do contemporary art organizations have toward society in times of urgent human and sociopolitical crisis? I focus on the case of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2022, the museum publicly expressed solidarity with Ukraine by hanging a large Ukrainian flag on its façade and facilitating a donation campaign. This public position becomes especially significant when viewed alongside the museum’s curatorial and collecting framework. In 2019, the Stedelijk selected Ahmet Öğüt’s “Bakunin’s Barricade” (2015), a work referring to the use of artworks on barricades during political uprising. The work was later acquired by the museum in 2021, raising questions about the value and function of art in times of social and political transformation.
Against this background, on 28 May 2024, a group of cultural workers, artists, and activists requested that the museum loan “Bakunin’s Barricade” to help protect students protesting in solidarity with Palestine and against Israeli violence in Gaza. In June 2024, the museum declined the request, citing a contractual clause that reproductions of the work could also be used.
This refusal raises broader questions about the responsibility of public art institutions, the limits of institutional solidarity, and how cultural organizations position themselves in relation to geopolitical violence.
Fadwa Naamna is a cultural practitioner, curator, and writer whose work engages with the intersections of art and politics. Her practice has moved across the contemporary Palestinian and international art scenes, with a particular focus on sociopolitical questions emerging from conflict zones. Alongside her curatorial and cultural work, in recent years she has also focused on writing para-fictional stories for children. Naamna has worked with and alongside institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Bern Academy of the Arts HKB, St. Joost School of Art & Design, Beit Hagefen Cultural Center, and W139.
Diana Kudaibergenova is a cultural and political sociologist interested in the interplay of power relations in nationalism studies and politics of dictatorship. She studies different intersections of power relations through realms of political sociology dealing with concepts of state, nationalising regimes, and ideologies. Her publications explore the nexus of power networks, dominant discourses (especially nationalistic) and seek to understand the interplay of decision-making behind major political developments in a given state. She looks at regimes, communities, social movements and protest groups.
Katarzyna Bojarska is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies of the SWPS University in Warsaw, head of Centre for Comparative Research on Memory Cultures, co-founder and editor of “View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture” academic journal www.pismowidok.org. Interested in the relations of visual culture, memory, gender and violence, involved in numerous research projects.