What is photography if not the product of fixing the outer contour — the one that covers the eye and the one that remains invisible to natural optics, but is captured by mechanical optics?
The contours that have to be documented in photographs today are scary, painful, but at the same time desperately needed. For our reality during the Great War is sharpened in all its manifestations — be it the battlefield or the dawn seen from the window.

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Ilya Bela's creative lens is focused on the inner contour, because now it needs more delineation and strengthening than the external one. His pictures suggest that the viewer take a step towards drawing thicker lines where it is needed, and dotted where there is not enough for the rest, not enough strength has been gathered.
The series “Genocide” with its sore backs provokes to keep your eyes wide open and not look away from grief. And “Moments of Life” gives a piece of faith that calm and cozy days are still possible and real and will definitely be with you.

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The series “Inner Contour” and “The Illusion of the Real” were designed by Ilya Bell as a game with form: the human silhouettes in the photo stand out from the background contextually, but do not dissonate, but complement it in their own unique way. After all, the freedom of the external world begins with the freedom of the inner, nourished in our hearts, our inner contours.
It is the concept of the representation of inner freedom that combines the photographs of Ilya Bell with the painting and graphics of Taras Shevchenko. Individual works of the artist presented in the exhibition were created by him out of the need to assert his own identity, which was encroached upon by the empire, with which we still have to fight. And Shevchenko's fixation of his inner contour, resistance to enemy pressure did not pass in vain, but influenced the choice of his people on the path to an independent future.

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The photo exhibition will be exhibited from August 7 to 25, 2024
Entrance to the opening is free. On other days — for the entrance ticket to the museum.
Opening hours are Wednesday-Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00 (ticket office closes at 17:15)

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