From 29 October to 2 November, The Ukrainian Museum presents Light on the Waves, a special screening program dedicated to the emergence of video art in Odesa in the second half of the 1990s — a time when media technologies were only beginning to enter the artistic language of Ukraine. These early works appeared amid profound social and political transformations and the search for new forms of imagination that resisted the inertia of post-Soviet culture.
A decisive role in this process was played by the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Odesa (1996–2003). As part of the international network of SCCA across Central and Eastern Europe, the Odesa Center provided artists with access to previously unattainable equipment — video cameras, editing stations, and digital technologies. This access enabled technical experimentation and gave rise to new modes of reflection, where history, politics, and personal experience intertwined in a new visual vocabulary.
Light on the Waves revisits this pivotal legacy, offering audiences a rare opportunity to encounter early Ukrainian video art in dialogue with the institutional history that enabled it. Alongside archival works from the 1990s, the program also features several recent videos by a younger generation of artists who are shaping Ukraine’s art scene today, underscoring the continuity and transformation of this practice across decades.
On Friday, October 31 at 6 - 8 pm, join us for a talk with Andrii Siguntsov, curator of the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, who will discuss the evolution of Odesa video art and present selected works from the program.
