Dispatches. Artists Design Postcards as a Call for Solidarity
5 Oct - 31 Dec 2023
On the occasion of the Kyiv Biennial 2023, Muhka presented Dispatches, a postcard project in collaboration with the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv. Twelve artists were invited to design a postcard that circulated as an artistic message of solidarity, both within and beyond the biennial. In a time of conflict, Dispatches offered a tangible and poetic form of connection.
+++ The postcards were available in the autumn of 2023 at M HKA and many other locations. +++
Dispatches was a postcard initiative, organised by Muhka in partnership with the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv, exclusively for the Kyiv Biennial 2023. With the biennial’s unique ‘distributed’ format spanning venues across Ukraine and the EU, Muhka enlisted twelve distinguished artists to design a postcard that was featured at all biennial locations and beyond. This project served as a humble plea to send dispatches from the front lines of our own lives.
The participating artists included Babi Badalov, Oleksandr Burlaka, Uliana Bychenkova, Davyd Chychkan, Jeremy Deller, Experimental Jetset, Mekhitar Garabedian, Shilpa Gupta, Iman Issa, Kaja Kusztra, Marina Naprushkina, and Anna Sorokovaya.
Dispatches – [dɪˈspætʃ] – stands for: the sending of someone or something to a destination for a specific purpose; deal with a task quickly and efficiently; an official report on state or military affairs; a report, often of war, sent by a journalist abroad; to kill someone. In the context of this postcard project, dispatches refers to artists conveying their message of solidarity through art.
Dispatches was presented within L’Internationale, the confederation of European museums for contemporary art, of which Muhka is a founding member. This confederation aims to find strength through solidarity and is committed to promoting art and culture as a source of unity and understanding.
About Kyiv Biennial 2023
The Kyiv Biennial 2023 brought together artists, curators, and institutions to celebrate the power of art and contribute to a world of solidarity and understanding. With locations in Ukraine and the European Union, this biennial provided a unique platform for international artistic exchange and reflection.
The Kyiv Biennial 2023 was envisioned and organized by the Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv) in conjunction with tranzit.at (Vienna), tranzit.org (Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Cluj, Iași, Prague, and Vienna), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Museum Crisis Center (Lviv), Other Edges, Dovzhenko Centre (Kyiv), Asortymentna Kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk), and Sorry, No Rooms Available (Uzhhorod).
![Suchan Kinoshita, Arrows [Pijlen], 2002. Collectie M HKA](https://wp-assets-sh.imgix.net/sites/15610/2026/05/web-image_04_Kinoshita.jpg?ar=3%3A2&crop=faces%2Centropy&fit=crop&auto=format&q=60&dpr=1&h=305)
