BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.5//EN TZID:Europe/London X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London BEGIN:VEVENT UID:11832@artinliverpool.com DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London;VALUE=DATE:20260417 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London;VALUE=DATE:20260608 DTSTAMP:20260409T120059Z URL:https://www.artinliverpool.com/events/self-defined-new-stories-from-ar chives/ SUMMARY:Open Eye Gallery: Self-Defined. New Stories From Archives DESCRIPTION:Launch: 16 April / 6–8pm / Open Eye Gallery / RSVP\nSelf-Def ined exhibition brings together the histories from the East (or Centre\, depending on perspective) of Europe through the contemporary work of artis ts from different geographies working with local contexts and their own fa mily stories. It explores non-institutional\, independent\, private archiv ing and the non-existence or inaccessibility of material memory.\n \;\ nThe projects featured in the exhibition range from an exploration of post -WW2 family displacement in Poland\, Germany\, and Ukraine\; to the histo ry of the Crimean Tatars in the 20th century\; to a decades-long photogra phic exploration of life in the Latvian countryside\; from playful collage s deconstructing Soviet tourist photographs to a speculative video dealin g with the disappearance of the family archive.\n \;\nViktoria Bavykin a\, who curated the exhibition together with Open Eye Gallery’s Max Gorb atskyi\, said: “This exhibition is the first attempt in our long-term wo rk with photography archives from countries occupied or influenced by the Soviet regime\, whose histories\, legacies\, and lives were shaped by year s of totalitarian and imperial rule. During this project\, which we hope t o build with our current and future partners across Europe\, we want to co mmission artists and photographers to work with their local private\, publ ic\, and vernacular archives\, reconsidering them from a contemporary pers pective.”\n \;\n“Mind of Winter” by Karolina Gembara is an exp loration of post-WW2 displacement and border changes through the stories o f families from Poland\, Germany\, and Ukraine\, centred on Karolina’s o wn family history. She grew up in a Polish family that had been relocated from Ukraine\, inhabiting the German-built house in Poland vacated by the German family who was forced to move to Germany. The work combines contemp orary staged photographs that respond to past events and images from the a rchive.\n \;\nSimilar to Gembara’s work\, Emine Ziyatdin based her project “Crimean Counter-Archive From Below” on personal archives a nd her own family history to raise the issue of epistemic injustice – n amely\, how knowledge about the history of the Crimean Tatars in the 20th century has long been constructed from Soviet and later Russian perspectiv es\, strictly excluding authentic voices. Decades of deportations\, persec ution\, and exile of the Crimean Tatar people continue today following Rus sia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. This has led to a rupture in histori cal continuity\, the destruction of family ties and cultural practices\, a nd a diminished ability to shape and articulate their own historical narra tive. Working with her family’s photographic archives\, Emine reconstruc ts fragments of personal memory and gives voice to the experiences of hund reds of thousands of Crimean Tatars.\n \;\nAndrii Dostliev’s “Deat h of Lucretia” is a speculative and playful outcome of the long-standin g research into a collection of commercially produced tourist photographs from the small town of Svitohirsk in the Donetsk region in the East of Ukr aine. A local photography studio has been serving the tourists visiting a local resort. Over the decades\, it has produced an infinite number of ima ges employing various techniques of photo-manipulation and collaging\, com bining the group tourist photographs with the views on the local landmark\ , Sviatohirsk monastery. The artist proposes viewing those practices as ‘vernacular modernism’\, which existed in indirect opposition to the o fficial modernist project of the Soviet state. His exploration is made in collaboration with contemporary Ukrainian photography researchers and Rena issance paintings.\nLia Dostlieva’s work "Ten faded faces"\, like many pieces in this exhibition\, turns to the archives of her own family in Don etsk\, Ukraine. However\, in Lia’s case\, the central issue lies precise ly in the absence of a family archive – the lack of photographs\, docume nts\, and records – compounded by a Soviet-era habit of silence\, the fr agmentation of relatives’ memories\, and the nature of individual memory \, which over time unconsciously reshapes and replaces recollections. The key problem posed in this work determines both its method and medium: a st aged\, imagined\, and speculative video in which memory travels through fr agments and traces of recollection. By engaging with the nature of individ ual memory and how it transforms over time\, the work opens broader questi ons about how political and social circumstances have led to the disappear ance of material traces of a once large family history.\nIn partnership wi th the National Library of Latvia and researcher Līga Goldberga\, we pres ent the selection of photographs from the archive of Latvian photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944 - 2011). The House Near the River is a decade s-long photographic exploration of life in the Latvian countryside that th e photographer started in the 1960s and continued throughout her photograp hic life. It is a quiet\, slow observation of life that\, at the same time \, stands as a radical practice of a woman photographer working during the Soviet photo-club era. Dzividzinska pursued her photographic career\, bal ancing between what is acceptable and her own artistic direction. She was her own archivist in a space where institutions couldn’t serve her. Līg a Goldberga approaches Zenta Dzividzinska’s archive employing a feminist lens to articulate her creative practice\, being essentially feminist at the time of non-existent feminist discourse in Soviet Latvia.\n \;\nIn the atrium (on photography stands)\, we'll have Everyone Needs Food\, a collaborative exhibition by photographer Jane MacNeil\, developed through University of Liverpool research\, exploring how community food support i n Liverpool reflects the realities of cost-of-living pressures\, resilienc e\, and lived experience to spark conversation on food insecurity.\nLia Do stlieva’s work "Ten faded faces" and Andrii Dostliev’s “Death of Mod ern Lucretia” were co-commissioned by the University of Salford and Open Eye Gallery.\n \;\nThis exhibition is produced in partnership with Th e Liverpool European Festival\, University of Salford\, National Library o f Latvia\, Cultural and creative ecosystem of Latvia as a resource of res ilience and sustainability. ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.artinliverpool.com/wp-content/upload s/2026/03/Archival-image-from-Andrii-Dostlievs-Death-of-Lucretia-project-2 026-1.jpg CATEGORIES:Exhibitions LOCATION:Open Eye Gallery\, Mann Island\, Liverpool Waterfront\, Liverpool\ , L3 1BP\, Liverpool\, United Kingdom GEO:53.40423;-2.994412 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Mann Island\, Liverpool Wat erfront\, Liverpool\, L3 1BP\, Liverpool\, United Kingdom;X-APPLE-RADIUS=1 00;X-TITLE=Open Eye Gallery:geo:53.40423,-2.994412 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260329T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR