03.07.2011 Cai Guo-Qiang to exhibit at IZOLYATSIA, Donetsk, Ukraine
 *Cai Guo-Qiang – 1040M Underground* opens on Saturday, 27 August through
Sunday, 13 November 2011 at *IZOLYATSIA. Platform For Cultural
Initiatives*in Donetsk. This marks Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo
exhibition in Ukraine and
will feature two new site-specific installations by the artist, including a
new series of gunpowder drawings produced on the *IZOLYATSIA* campus. The
artist will work closely with local painters, miners and volunteers to
create the gunpowder drawings on paper. The production process will be open
and free to the public, and audience members will be able to witness an
artist at work as well as experience first hand the ignition of the
gunpowder drawings.
The exhibition chronicles Cai’s dialogue with the local community and their
history and culture. His work seeks to express the fate of people,
specifically the once-glorified laborers of the lower class in a rapidly
changing time. The exhibition also reveals new possibilities through
contemporary art: by transforming waste into treasure, we inherit and
practice the “Socialist ideal” of art for the people and art embedded in
life.
*Cai Guo-Qiang – 1040M Underground *stems from the artist’s experience in
May to the coal and salt mines of the industrial Donbas region. During his
visit, Cai descended 1040 meters below ground level and trekked more than
1000 meters in the tunnel, mirroring the same route the coal miners take
every day. After his “journey to the center of the earth,” a hike to the top
of the *IZOLYATSIA* *terrekon* – as “slag heaps” are known colloquially –
unveiled a breathtaking view of the city: white smoke from factory chimneys,
a bright orange waterfall of molten steel glistening in the sunset, and
statues of coal mining heroes that stand tall all over the city.
The first element of the exhibition, *Monuments on Shoulders*, is a
gunpowder drawing installation housed in the main gallery. The entire
gunpowder drawing making process will take place in front of a live
audience. Cai will first lead nine local Socialist Realist painters to
sketch 27 mine workers’ portraits in the lobbies of the salt and coal mines.
Volunteers will then help carve the images into stencils and Cai will spread
different grades and grains of gunpowder onto the canvases according to
different effects he wishes to achieve. All 27 portraits will be ignited.
The finished gunpowder drawings will be mounted on frames identical to the
ones used to hold the portraits of Soviet leaders in propaganda parades,
spreading across a mound of coal to the left and a slope of salt to the
right in the gallery. The drawings will be lit with mining lamps, hanging
from the ceiling like stars.
*Nursery Rhymes*, the second component of the exhibition, will be situated
in the remnants of a factory building (Shop 2) destroyed by a fire. When
visitors enter the space, they will be instantly drawn to the soot-covered
interior of the building. Under dim lighting, nine used mining carts line up
as if meandering down the track in the tunnel, rocking slowly like cradles.
Each “cradle” contains a projection on the canopy: Ukrainian folk songs,
Soviet era athletes and other role models, communist propaganda films,
documentaries on the glorified lives of miners, and Socialist period art
films. Along the sides of the canopy will hang salvaged objects from the
days of the factory, such as old musical instruments from the factory club,
tiny chess boards from the factory kindergarten, and old workers’ uniforms
and tools, all rocking along like a child’s mobile.
For more information please visit http://www.izolyatsia.org For press inquiries contact *Tetyana Filevska*, project coordinator
tetyana.filevska@izolyatsia.org or by phone +38 067 503 23 69
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