Post-Soviet Visions: Image and identity in the new Eastern Europe 

Calver 22 Foundation from 23 February – 15 April, 2018 
Wednesday to Sunday, from 12 to 6pm 

Entry: Free 

The Calver 22 Foundation is hosting a group exhibition exploring new visual representations of lifestyle and landscape in Eastern Europe.  

According to a Press Release, the exhibition gathers the work of a young generation of artists rising to prominence a quarter century after the end of Communism.   

Although the photographers come from different countries, like Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, their work is a result of a common past they share with each other, through their or their parents being raised under communist rule.  

And although today they live in a world where borders between East and West have been erased by modern technology, the physical traces of their past still exist.  

They can be seen in Jedrzej Franek’s dizzying shots of Polish tower blocks and Michal Korta’s striking black and white images of Brutalist buildings in Skopje, Macedonia. 

Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and the end of its influence over its satellite states, the countries of the former Eastern Bloc have each forged their own paths. In artworks such as Hassan Kurbanbaev’s portraits of teenagers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and David Meskhi’s photos of skater kids in Georgia, Post-Soviet Visionscaptures the new identities emerging across the region. Instead of old binaries of East vs West, socialist vs capitalist, their images capture a generation shaped by issues that are personal rather than the political; by questions of sexuality, gender and style.