Helsinki

Sergei Bratkov: Harkova/Moskova

Sergei Bratkov: Harkova/Moskova

May

19

Thu

12:00 – 18:00

2–6°C

clear sky

Kohta is very pleased to announce that the next exhibition is a constellation of older and newer work by prominent photographer and video artist Sergey Bratkov. Born in Kharkiv in 1960, he has lived in Moscow since 2000, where he is a much-appreciated teacher at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia.

The exhibition title is intentionally simple and blunt. In the Finnish versions of the two cities’ names identical endings appear. This seemed like an efficient device for juxtaposing what now represents two opposite worlds. We can let ‘Harkova’ stand for the political identity that the people of Ukraine is building for their own future and ‘Moskova’ for the fear of politics that Putin’s regime has so successfully installed in the Russian public.

The slash of the title denotes relation without promising an easy way to resolve conflict. At this point it would be naive to see its rising diagonal as a possible compromise between the societal horizontality that keeps Ukraine alive and Russia’s infamous power vertical. Needless to say, Bratkov’s reluctance to abandon his young students in Moscow to an increasingly hostile surrounding reality creates a dilemma for him as a Ukrainian artist.

Thu 19 May 2022 – 10 Jul 2022 12:00 – 18:00

2–6°C

clear sky

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