National Center “Ukrainian House” presents the exhibition “MATTER MATTERS. Ukrainian Art Textile”, which is a representation of the practice of Ukrainian artists over 100 years — from traditional tapestry to experimental works using textile materials. In the exposition there are more than 120 works of art by about 60 authors.

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Textile production is one of the oldest crafts in the world and at the same time one of the least studied in the context of art history. With the potential to transform the material environment, textiles quickly became a status symbol. But to position it today as an art form connected purely with functionality is to ignore the history of creative discoveries.

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The movement of changes was the avant-garde currents of the twentieth century, which shook the established traditions of textile production. Artists, passionate about innovative meanings, created contemporary art, and textile practices, despite their original utilitarian background, became a reaction both to the global search for new artistic means and to the social challenges of the time in which they originated and lived.

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The project “MATTER MATTERS. Ukrainian Art Textile” will acquaint the viewer with the creative experience of boychukists, sixties, as well as contemporary artists, in particular those for whom working with textile media is not typical. The exhibition will present works by Ukrainian artists who worked with textiles in public space; works that developed the line of Ukrainian style in interior and costume; textile practices dedicated to current topics of the present. Embroidery of oppressed Ukrainians made in camps and colonies of the Gulag will be exhibited separately.

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During the independence of Ukraine, the art textile becomes the leader of global contexts related to the problems of the post-colonial era: memory, collective trauma, political confrontation, ecology, gender issues. Many artists began working with textiles during the Russian-Ukrainian war: in their own way, they reassemble the Ukrainian identity, moving from the origins of tradition and rethinking it in their work.

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The exhibition “MATTER MATTERS” tells about the meanings woven into Ukrainian art textiles and illustrates their transformation in response to the challenges of time. The project reflects the variability of textile practices of Ukrainian artists, reveals the factors that influenced the emergence of a number of narratives that support Ukrainian culture in the last century with its conflicts and disasters, and proposes to look at textiles as a high art and a meaningful medium.

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Curators: Tatyana Voloshyna, Alisa Grishanova, Ekaterina Lisova.

Organizer: National Center “Ukrainian House”.

Project partners: JSC “Oschadbank”, Visa.

Working hours:

Tuesday — Sunday from 11:00 to 19:00,

Monday is a day off.

Ticket price:

full — 100 UAH,

preferential — 50 UAH (for schoolchildren and students with certificates).

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Admission is free for: pensioners, children under 7 years old, persons with disabilities of 1-2 groups, participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, combatants and members of their families, museum workers, members of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, holders of membership cards CIMAM, ICOM, AICA (subject to valid ID), holders of Ukrainian House subscriptions — “Circle of the House” cards.

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