In December of last year, Julia and Max Voloshyn, founders 16 years ago of the Voloshyn Gallery, based in kyiv, Ukraine, traveled to the United States with some of their pieces to participate in a couple of art fairs, NADA and Untitled Art. Fair, both in Miami.
In this context, they tested positive for Covid-19 and had to stay longer than expected in the United States, convalescing and isolated. Unfortunately, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began while they were still recovering and they were stranded on the other side of the world indefinitely.
Since then they have not been able to leave US territory and, under the weight of uncertainty, they have had to give up, at least temporarily, their professional and personal life in Ukraine.
“Interestingly, the Voloshyn Gallery headquarters is a space they adapted from a World War II bomb shelter. Now the gallery has been used again as a shelter, both for the team that is in kyiv and for the families of some of the artists,” Nuria Richards tells this newspaper, in the context of the Material Art Fair that, From this Thursday and until next Sunday, it presents its eighth edition in a new venue, the skeleton of an old textile factory at 369 Sabino Street, in the Atlampa neighborhood.
The Voloshyn Gallery was invited by the Material Department to join the fair’s selection of 60 national and international galleries at no cost. There were three pieces by Voloshyn that traveled to Mexico to be presented at the fair, all three of women: Lesia Khomenko, Anastasiia Podervianska and Kateryna Lysovenko, all three with representations of the female body, two in acrylic on canvas and one of Podervianska, in textile art.
“The three artists explore the theme of representation up to the political level. One of the most important things about the booth is to continue supporting Ukrainian artists, especially women”, shares Richards and expands: “the gallery is trying to send as many resources to the artists who are being evacuated and to those who stayed in the town. Right now, operations are fully dedicated to that backup. The sale of the works will allow the artists to continue not only with their production, but also to have a way of supporting their families. So these pieces are at an important curatorial moment not just for themselves.”
Right now, in kyiv, there is a considerable amount of work protected in the Voloshyn Gallery, “but we do not know how long it will be possible to guarantee its protection,” laments Richards.
women gain ground
As well as the Voloshyn Gallery, among the 60 galleries that this year make up the eighth edition of the Material Art Fair, the pictorial works stand out, in watercolor, oil and charcoal on canvas, paper, cloth or a piece of cardboard, and textiles, from traditional embroidery with rebellious motifs, to the elaboration of sculptural or bas-relief pieces that replace stone with wool.
Many of these works distance themselves from the academic canon, as if today’s reality were no longer that safe and tangible zone that formal figurativism reproduced. And although the art in Material takes up the cult of the body, the women of art have decided to eliminate the figure of the masculine genius that for centuries has capitalized on the interpretation of the feminine. The edition is an example of how the art of women, while exploring corporality, is deeply political.
A couple of notable examples
The Instituto de Visión gallery, based in Bogotá and New York, and focused primarily on women’s work, presents work by Mexican artist Aurora Pellizzi made from wool naturally dyed with cochineal scarlet and fixed on industrial felt. The artist presents a series of nine works in this format with beautiful representations of the female body: the legs, the buttocks, the breasts, the pubis, molded with wool dyed in different colors.
“The suspended temporality of weaving and dyeing distances it from the forces of contemporary consumer culture and the modern cult of efficiency and speed,” mentions the presentation catalog of the pieces, provided by the gallery.
For its part, the Bombón Projects gallery, based in Barcelona, presents a series of small-format oil on canvas works by the American artist Mari Eastman, who makes a series of representations of female images of animals that appear in the fashion magazines, but it strips them of the canon of neatness and restores a cruder and more imperfect sense of reality.
“It seems to me that there is an opening towards women’s work, and it is about time,” shares Joana Roda Calvet, director of Bombón Projects. “Textile art, for example, is not minor, but it becomes an indispensable means to put in tension many issues that today are necessary to make visible.”
Material Art Fair
Sabino 369, Colonia Atlampa
From April 28 to May 1
Twitter and Instagram: @mmmmmaterial
Some participating galleries:
Institute of Vision / Bogotá
Art : Concept / Paris
Bureau / New York
Bonbon Projects / Barcelona
Weather / Milan
SANDWICH / Bucharest
Volosyn / Ukraine
Target shooting / Guadalajara
VERY Gallery / San Cristóbal de las Casas
Collector / Monterey