The main mission of Once Upon a Queer is the research and public presentation of queer history in Eastern Europe, based on the experience of Ukraine and Poland. The project combines contemporary visual art, performance, journalism and queer studies. To attract different audiences, the project uses the universal language of modern video art and historicity.
Within the framework of the Once Upon a Queer project, a unique web platform will be launched. The platform will serve as an online exhibition of videos by Ukrainian and Polish artists and an archive for analytical and artistic texts about the project and queer history of Eastern Europe. To populate this archive, both the professional community and a wide audience will be involved. Such an approach will open opportunities for cooperation both for project participants and for those who first learned about it. The created videos will also be published as an online series on the media platform Block (blokmagazine.com).
An international open call for participation in the project was already held. 44 Ukrainian and Polish artists applied. The jury consisted of Alina Kleitman, the curator of the project; Kateryna Filiuk, the chief curator of the IZOLYATSIA Foundation; Valdemar Tatarchuk director of Labirynt Gallery, and Karol Radziszewski a Polish artist and activist, selected 10 artists who had worked on creating videos for several months. The 10 selected artists are Liliana Zeic, Daniela Weiss, Martha Navrot and Jagoda Voytovycz, Szymon Adamchak, Sarmen Beglaryan and Tomasz Fudala, Daniil Halkin, Fyodor Khorkov, Anton Karyuk, Anton Shebetko, AntiGonna. Artists will present their videos which reveal private episodes of Ukrainian and Polish queer history, and highlight general issues of gender identity.
The role of history is significant in the project. In European countries, with the aim of comprehensive coverage of LGBTQ+ topics, special branches of foundations, institutes, and creative platforms are being created, where exhibitions, discussions, and presentations by researchers and journalists are regularly held. Due to such European practices, the number of projects, including artistic ones, aimed at revealing and understanding the topic is increasing. This, in turn, leads to the strengthening of democracy and the creation of a culture of general impartiality and tolerance.
However, there is no described and documented queer history in Ukraine, just as there is no academic research on this topic. Most often, individual enthusiasts archive, study and popularize local stories, and artists also frequently work on this topic. The lack of a public platform for communication, exchange and storage of knowledge about queer history in Ukraine leads to social ignorance and rejection and slows down the formation of tolerance in society, negatively affecting the social position of LGBTQ+ people.
At the same time, Poland, which is part of the European Union, currently ranks last in terms of the overall status of LGBTQ+ rights (in the categories of equality and non-discrimination, family, legal gender recognition and bodily integrity, hate crime and incitement to hatred, place in civil society, protection, according to ILGA-Europe statistics).
In order to overcome stigma, include queer history in academic discourse and raise the general level of awareness in Ukraine and Poland, it is necessary to build systematic contacts with the audience at the institutional level. Furthermore, a long-term structure of interaction, not limited to rare exhibitions should be created. Researchers need to be involved in archiving and studying stories which mainly were not written down. Once Upon a Queer project is only part of a larger process, which, however, has every chance to strengthen and support the dialogue about queer history in Ukraine, Poland and the world.
Once Upon a Queer is an international interdisciplinary project co-implemented by the IZOLYATSIA Foundation (Kyiv, Ukraine) and Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, Poland) with support from the European Union and the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine within the framework of the House of Europe program.
Partner support by:
- Queer Archives Institute
- The European Union and the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine within the framework of the House of Europe program
Once Upon a Queer on social networks:
www.facebook.com/once.uponaqueer
www.instagram.com/once.uponaqueer
