PROPAGANDA OF THE LIVING WORLD
10.09.–09.10.2022
Opening hours
Thu - Sat, 3 - 7pm

Propaganda of the Living World is the title of the artwork by Kateryna Lysovenko created on the 2nd of March 2022. It is a midsized watercolour on paper showing a tightly gathered group of people amidst an enoumose dark field that are looking over the two murdered bodies (of an adult and a child) on the ground. The figures are painted rather nominally, but the overall dirty palette and some minor details, like stains of red on the lying bodies and some occasional splashes of brownish paint on the horizon inform this piece with horror and darkness of the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The title of the artwork is inscribed messily right on top of the image and followed by “Stop Murder”.

Formally it is conceived in line with the rules of propaganda making—it fully utilises the poster-like accessibility and immediacy of the message. Yet it was clearly made as something opposite—as an outcry of a person facing the atrocities of a real propaganda machine.

This is not the first time when Lysovenko turns to “propaganda” tools in her practice: her work of 2020-21 went under the motto (as well as title of the series) “Propaganda of the World of My Dream”. There, she mixed mythological and religious iconography with an idea of a post-queer lifestyle. She inhabited her works with people of various genders, non-humans and nature as a subject sharing a co-living together.

Other artists in the show share Lysovenko’s interest in reconfiguration of relationships in the “living world” where humans, non-human agents and landscapes create an independent subject permeating each other.

It is exactly this subject that the current war has put under attack leaving behind an unlivable world. And it is this subject in artistic practices that becomes as relevant as ever.

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The Naked Room is a contemporary art gallery based in Kyiv that is driven by rigorous curatorial programming and the desire to establish a legitimate art market for Ukrainian artists. Co-founded in 2018 by the independent curators Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko, the gallery focuses on the representation of Ukrainian artists in local and international markets.

The Naked Room collaborates with a number of established artists and/or their families in attaining recognition for their early work and archives. The gallery has also founded the Oleg Holosiy Artist Estate, the first foundation of its kind in Ukraine. In 2022, The Naked Room was selected to represent Ukraine at La Biennale di Venezia and also presented three female artists from Kyiv at the LISTE Art Fair in Basel.

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We would like to thank Goethe Institute in Ukraine and the City of Munich Department of Arts and Culture for their generous support in making this project possible. With the support of the Team of Excellence for the Culture and Creative Industries City of Munich.