What role do exhibitions play in moments of crisis? Can curatorial practices go beyond representation to become acts of solidarity in themselves?
In this episode of Radio Unheard, Asia Tsisar speaks with Aleksei Borisionok and Antonina Stebur, both are recognized curators active in the international art field, who come from a Belarusian background. Together, they reflect on the challenges faced after the 2020–2021 protests, the difficulties of working in exile, and the shifting dynamics it produces. We explore how exhibitions can create horizontal relations and practices of dialogue with communities in challenging situations.
Drawing on their projects — Every Day at Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv and Senses of Safety at Yermilov Center in Kharkiv — we discuss how solidarity can be practiced through exhibition-making, and how such gestures may resonate beyond the walls of the institution.
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Aleksei Borisionok is a curator, writer, and organizer who currently lives and works in Vienna. He is a member of the artistic-research group Problem Collective and the Work Hard! Play Hard! working group. He writes about art and politics for various magazines, catalogs, and online platforms such as e-flux Journal, L’Internationale Online, Partisan, Springerin, and Paletten, among many others. He is currently a fellow at the Vera List Center in New York, and, together with Katalin Erdődi, he was co-curating the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague (2024).
Antonina Stebur is a curator, researcher, and editor exploring contemporary art as a tool of infrastructural and political imagination. She founded Mycelium [Грыбнiца], a decolonial research lab, and is editor-in-chief of the AWC Journal. She has contributed to documenta 15, the Venice Biennale, and Theatertreffen Berlin. Her current curatorial project, developed with Joanna Kordjak and Taras Gembik, is the exhibition What Are Our Collective Dreams? at Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw. Her research introduces the concept of “infrastructural art,” focusing on artistic practices that intervene in broken systems through operational rather than representational tactics.
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Radio Unheard is supported by the European Union under the House of Europe programme.
The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
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