"pARTisan"/ Olga Kopenkina

Panarama – exhibition

Keywords: environment / installation non-art venue occupied venue painting performance

Exhibition “Panarama” (first survey of the non-official art of Republic of Belarus) at an abandoned building. Minsk, October 13, 1989. Exhibition booklet’s cover. Courtesy: “pARTisan”.

The exhibition “Panarama,” organized by the Belarusian Cultural Fund, was held in an old deserted house on Handlevaya Street in Minsk. It was a very significant event of the decade. Paintings and installations exhibited in empty apartments created an atmosphere of artistic underground. Performances by Belarusian and international artists happened throughout the exhibition. The exhibition catalog “First Survey of Belarus Non-Official Art” was later published. In his introductory article, the artist Ales Taranovich wrote:

“To answer to the question asked by the Belarusian Cultural fund, ‘What kind of exhibition would you like to see the most?,’ the majority of the audience answered, ‘unofficial art.’ When making the decision to organize this exhibition, BFK’s goal was to show the direction that contemporary Belarus art was going by that showcasing the presence of non-Realist traditions: Expressionism, Surrealism, Conceptualism, Pop art, installation, performance, and others.”

Source: Volha Archipava. Belarusian Avant-garde of the 1980s. ‘pARTisan’s Collection’ series. Minsk 2012. http://partisanmag.by/

Date: 13 October–4 December 1989

Participants: Individual artists and artist groups such as Galina, Kvadrat, BLO, Forma, Pluralis, Komi-Kon, Bismark, and others

Organized by: Belarusian Cultural Fund (BFK)