Maidan set art free from the fight for the political agenda, since everything has become a part of the political agenda. On the other hand, the rapidly accelerating political and geopolitical changes brought several challenges for artists.
On 9 May 2019, during the opening of the 58th Venice Biennale, the world’s largest cargo plane was supposed to fly over the city. Mriya (also known as ‘The Dream’, or technically the Antonov An-225), was meant to soar above the Giardini, the main area for the Biennale’s national pavilions, casting a shadow. On board would have been a hard drive with a registry of all 1,143 Ukrainian artists who had responded to the curators’ call and submitted their basic info through a Google form. The flight was meant to be an opening performance for the Ukrainian Pavilion, which would take place not on any other day but 9 May — ‘Victory Day’, highly symbolic in the post-Soviet memory realm.
