At MAMbo in Bologna, a performance by Mariia Proshkovska on Ukrainian wheat

Taking place on Sunday, September 17, 2023, from 12 to 5 p.m. at the Sala delle Ciminiere of MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art in Bologna, the performance flour by Ukrainian artist Mariia Proshkovska (Kyiv, 1986) entitled Farina. Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Giulia Pezzoli, the performance will draw a metaphorical thread between the history of Bologna and its Forno del Pane (built in 1915 by the then socialist mayor Francesco Zanardi and now home to MAMbo), and the difficult situation of wheat production and distribution in the world after the start of large-scale war in February 2022.

Through prolonged physical exertion and the use of a hand millstone, Mariia Proshkovska will work for five consecutive hours inside the museum’s Chimney Room to produce flour from burnt Ukrainian wheat, reminding us, through the fatigue and harshness of the chosen task, of the very high price her country is paying for the harvests of the past few years, during which cultivated territories have turned into real battlefields.

The non-random choice of the Ciminiere Hall as a performance venue by the artist and curators is meant to recall the ancient and fundamental function of bread supply that the building on Via Don Giovanni Minzoni took on during the terrible years of World War I for the city’s inhabitants.

Already a guest of the museum’s Sandra Natali Artist Residency from April to July 2022 due to the war in Ukraine and as part of a special edition of the ROSE Residency Program-curated by Giulia Pezzoli, launched in 2016 to promote the international mobility of contemporary art and support its most current and creative expressions-Proshkovska returns to Bologna and MAMbo with a new project: a performance dedicated to the city and its inhabitants, a symbolic action that once again emphasizes the universality of life and human experience and the sharing of its fundamental values.

For Farina, the artist enjoys the support of AIDA Foundation, a charitable initiative created through the efforts of the partners of Havas Village Ukraine (HVU). Admission to the Ciminiere Hall during the performance is free.

Mariia Proshkovska’s return to Bologna is intended to add a new piece to the fruitful relationship of dialogue and exchange with the museum, the city and the people with whom she has come into contact.

In 2022, her stay at the Sandra Natali Artist Residency was in fact an opportunity to build a palimpsest of initiatives in which to listen to and disseminate the voices of other artists and curators, both remaining in Ukraine and expatriates, and to reflect on possible strategies of support in the context of the war scenario. In this sense, the museum and the residency made themselves available as communication and awareness-raising tools to make known, through in-person meetings and remote connections, the situation experienced by professionals working in various roles in the field of contemporary art and to represent the instances of a representative cross-section of them.

An important public moment that arose from Proshkovska’s stay in Bologna was the performance On the Blade, created thanks to the ROSE program and presented in video form to the public in June 2022, as part of the E.LETTE festival, curated by Associazione Orlando, at the Biblioteca delle Donne in Bologna. The video screening was preceded by a meeting entitled Ukrainian feminist art during the war. 2014 - 2022 / Ukrainian feminist art during the war. 2014 - 2022, with the artist, Ukrainian curator Sergey Kantsedal and writer Alessandra Sarchi.

Maria Proshkovska was born in 1986 in Kyiv. She graduated from the National University of Internal Affairs in Kyiv and studied at the School of Modern Art of the Research Institute of Modern Art. Her work addresses issues of gender social studies, the influence of trauma on societies, and issues of self-identification and feminism. She won the special prize of the competition for young Ukrainian artists ÌUHi (2017) and the prize awarded by VOGUE Ukraine (2020), participated in the creative exchange program American Arts Incubator in Ukraine (2018). His works are part of the collections of the Shcherbenko Art Center (Kyiv, Ukraine), MAMbo (Bologna, Italy) and private collections in Ukraine and abroad. Her studio in Kyiv was the basis for the organization of the independent art space Lab24. She participated in the ROSE Residency Program at MAMbo (Bologna, Italy) in 2022 and, also in 2022, she was a fellow of the Woman in Conflict 1325 study program (Scotland, UK). Since September 2023, she has been a student and fellow of the Master Performance: Society course at UAL, Central Saint Martins College (London, UK).

Website: https://proshkowska.com/

At MAMbo in Bologna, a performance by Mariia Proshkovska on Ukrainian wheat

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