II Biennale of Young Art will take place in Kharkiv in the autumn, September 17-October 31, 2019. The theme of the Biennale this year: “Looks like I’m entering our garden”. The curators’ team for the main project: Anastasiia Yevsieieva, Daryna Skrynnyk-Myska, Borys Filonenko.

The main program is competitive, winners will be selected by an international jury.

The Biennale also has educational programs (curated by Kateryna Filiuk), children's programs (curated by Aza Nizi Maza Studio) and parallel programs (coordinated by Anastasia Leonova and Maria Volchonok).
You can read more about each program in the relevant sections of this site.

The Biennale is a means of showing the world view of the new generation in the Ukrainian visual arts; discovering new names and helping talented artists to succeed; after all, it is a way of looking around and inside ourselves through the prism of contemporary art. Also, the Biennale will enhance development of the cultural environment of Kharkiv and help various cultural institutions to gain new opportunities through an encounter with contemporary visual art.

"It looks like we are entering our garden": this phrase, a slight variation on the motto from the curatorial concept, has become symbolic: the preparation for the Second Biennale of Young Art was a journey of discovery for us and a creation of our collective garden.

Kharkiv had not yet hosted art projects of this magnitude and in many respects had not been ready. Nevertheless, we eventually managed to bring into the project over 60 cultural, social, scientific, business, and donor organizations, together with dozens of fantastic people.

All of this is our garden.

It was and remains important to us that everyone may grow freely and naturally in our garden: without censorship, without attempts to trim others into a convenient shape. Because this is the only way that art and society can grow.

Not only is the artist a gardener of culture. We, as cultural managers, are also gardeners whose task is to sow seeds, water the garden, and make sure that no plants begin to suffocate others.

The words taken up by the curatorial group to be the title of this year's Biennale, "It looks like I am entering our garden," appeared one day three years ago on a wall, as if spoken by the wall itself, in the Myronosytska street in Kharkiv. The original phrase read: "Son, it seems like I am entering our garden." A few houses down the street a wall bore another inscription: "You are picking cherries"; and another: "One of them is my dearest, but I don't know it yet." The silent dialogue of a mother with her soldier son tore the aching air and sharply recorded this: the garden these days is different, the garden is half empty, the garden is awaiting homecomings.

War lends a particularly fine optic to human relationships and a particularly keen understanding of the importance of artistic actions. Here in Kharkiv, we are 40 km away from the border with Russia and 250 km away from the line of combat. From this point of view, many things look different. The war forces you to cling to your garden and realise that culture is just like the armed forces. Art is just like an optical device through which we look at the world, daily rethinking not only our "friend-or-foe" identification toolkit, but our self-identification as well. Getting rid of this optics would mean going blind.

We are grateful to each and every one of those who have been supporting us in bringing people together around the idea that art can change our shared space.

And when the next city hosts the third Biennale, we promise at the outset to help the team that will take on this supremely challenging task. The task to put your city on the cultural map of the country and to invite the country for a visit to your garden.

Authors of the concept and curators of the biennale - Anastasia Evseyeva, Darina Skrynnik-Mys’ka, Boris Filonenko

The main program of the Biennale of Young Art 2019 presents 44 art projects that correspond to the stated curators of the concept "It seems I am entering our garden".

Artists and Projects at YermilovCentre:
Konstantin Zorkin "Vremysh", Sergey Torbinov "Inversion", Larion Lozovy "Machine and Garden", Vyacheslav Polyakov and Olena Subach "City of Gardens", Yuriy Bolsa "Anti-Romantics", Teresa Barabash "Mezha", Bogdan Lokatir and Margarita Zhuruv “Returns”, Yuriy Denysenkov "Background", Kateryna Lesov "Kolyskova", Olga Kuzyura "My Game", Vladimir Gavrish and Andrey Benitsky "Blindman", Andrey Rachinsky and Daniel Revkivsky "Darkness", Katya Buchachko "Yesterday it was not".

Hours of the exhibition: TUE-SUN  12:00-20:00

Free entrance!