Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

Theater of Hopes and Expectations. A Documentation

Prykarpattian Theater (UA)

Exhibition Opening
With Tereza Yakovyna (Artist, Kyiv/Berlin), Ania Koƚyszko (Curator, Düsseldorf)
Moderation: Elisabeth Bauer (HU)
Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie, Dorotheenstr. 65, 5th floor, 5.57

Theater of Hopes and Expectations is a process-based, participatory, and partly performative (re)construction project by the Ukrainian art collective Prykarpattian Theater (Ivan Bazak, Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk, Tereza Yakovyna, Ostap Yashchuk). In a first project phase, a pavilion was erected within Düsseldorf’s Volksgarten from August-October 2022. The construction’s facade was made of theatrical scenery from various German theaters. Theater of Hopes and Expectations opened an exhibition space for Ukrainian art(ists) and offered a participatory program of talks, exhibitions, screenings, concerts, and fundraisers in public space. In a second project phase, the Theater was dismantled and the materials shipped to Ukraine. On the initiative of the volunteer group Livyj Bereh, it has been rebuilt into a new home for the Honchar family in the Kyiv region, whose prior residence was destroyed by the russian tank in the Spring of 2022.

The exhibition displays a project documentation that was previously presented at the 18th Architecture Biennale 2023 in Venedig. Artist and collective member Tereza Yakovyna and Ania Koƚyszko, curator of the first project phase in Düsseldorf, will reflect on the transformative quality of the project, about the ironic and at the same time literary dimension of the 'theater' metaphor challenged throughout the project's realisation, about the 'house' as a symbol for solidarity, community-building, collective memory work, and existential protection.

Throughout the exhibition's duration, the 'house' metaphor will find another continuation in the form of a fundraiser the visitors are invited to support — and thus to question their position as mere spectators of a 'theater' at play, but to actively engage in a process and to join the collective solidary efforts of (re)construction, (re)thinking and (re)imagining Ukraine.