September 28 - October 1, 2017
Barcelona, Spain
September 28 - October 1, 2017
Barcelona, Spain
Performance was held within Swab Performance during the Swab Barcelona International Art Fair in 2017.
The performance of Maria Kulikovska «The Raft CrimeA» was held within Swab Performance during the Swab Barcelona International Art Fair in 2017. Izolyatsia Arts Foundation and Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv were made curators of the artworks of the five Ukrainian artists.
Crimean artist's performance was made in the fountain near the official pavilion of the art fair. «The Raft CrimeA» kept on the water, referring to performance, which was held by Maria Kulikovska in August 2016: from 16 to 19 August in Kyiv, Ukraine, among luxury restaurants and yachts, temporarily appeared the migratory Parliament of the Displaced «The Raft CrimeA» - a life raft with neon sign. On board the raft lived Kulikovska - a native Crimean, who received the status of the «displaced person» on 18 March 2014.
On August 19, Maria Kulikovska and people that wish to join her performance started to go in the Dnipro River on the «The Raft CrimeA» that August 25 - on the Independence Day of Ukraine - to cross the invisible water borders of the EU, to get metaphorically across them, and to continue their journey on the rivers of Europe. But, at down on August 25, in Vylkove, Ukraine, the «The Raft CrimeA» was stopped by the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. The performance ended prematurely.
Maria was living on the raft, deprived of any resources, only through support of people that care for her. The survival of the artist was dependent on compassion of other people that became the specific act through which Maria Kulikovska wanted to stress vulnerability of people that lost their homes and to appeal to the community to empathize with them. The «The Raft CrimeA» became a platform for discussion of urgent problems of immigrants and finding a way to solve them. The performance and social sculpture were made to collectively remember about the sensitivity and desperation of people that lost their own homeland and identity.
The context of the performance confidently interacted with migration questions in Spain - the country with more migrants, although the performance was difficult to read for the most foreign visitors.