Is It a Museum

digital printing, paper, pencil | The work was created especially for the exhibition "Sense of Safety" / 2024

In his artistic practice, Taras Kamennoy often resorts to social experiments and investigations, performing in public spaces and organizing exhibitions for workers in sheds. By carefully studying the environment and critically comprehending it, the artist analyzes the influence of the environment on the formation of our mentality in a political sense.

The work Is It a Museum, consisting of a series of photographs and drawings, arose from reflections on the role of museums and museumification in times of war. The artist is interested in the parallels between the path of a person and a work of art, as well as reflections on life and death. Getting a work of art into a museum is a death and a way into history. However, in a war situation, museums become vulnerable, and today, preserving the life of works of art means isolating them and providing shelter. It is known that at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, road signs were removed everywhere, and information and navigation about museums were also hidden to protect them.

While living in the village of Vysoke in the Kharkiv region, Kamennoy thought about the memorial room-museum of the prominent cultural and public figure Hnat Khotkevych (1878-1938), which he last visited during school trips in the 1990s. Based on stereotypical ideas about the museum and guided by distant memories, the artist begins a search for a building that could potentially become the Khotkevych Museum, reflecting this process in a series of photographs and drawings that are a pseudo-investigation.

In the process of photographing typical architectural structures, Kamennoy is most interested in what he refers to as "folklore" - the creative desire of people to ennoble their land, their own home, making it unique. The way the photographs are displayed resembles the boards of a criminal investigation: Kamennoy shows small details, such as substantial evidence, in close-ups, while the general views are smaller. In this "investigation," the artist is interested not in the final result but in the process of searching, which becomes a study of architectural form-making, nationality, and creativity of anonymous authors of fences and improved living conditions.

The compositional principle of each photo shows a view through the fence, creating the effect of peeping. The fence becomes an image of a border, a separation, and a symbol of protection and self-defense, something that helps preserve values and prolong memory. Guided by such considerations, Taras Kamennoy's work archives the frontline territory and records a museum of social life during the war.