One Day More, by Yevgenia Belorusets

In a series of interviews with the grantees of the Culture of Solidarity Fund Eunic Ukraine edition we look back on how their projects helped embedding Ukrainian culture in wider European spheres.

Who was leading this project? Can you shortly introduce yourselves?
Showcasing the work ‘One Day More’ by Yevgenia Belorusets – originally commissioned by EUNIC Brussels and the European Cultural Foundation- was led by several members of the EUNIC Brussels cluster, including the Embassy of Spain in Belgium (as current chair of the cluster), the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, the Liszt Institute in Brussels, and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Brussels. The EUNIC Brussels member institutes were in charge of raising the funds for the project, planning and coordinating the events and cooperating to implement them in the project. We partnered up with Migration Museum Brussels, which is located in Molenbeek – a western municipality of Brussels, inhabited predominantly by migrant communities. The Museum hosted the artwork in its foyer from the 1 November until the end of December and provided space for two of the events. We coordinated the project’s program with the museum’s agenda: International Migrants Day on the 18th of December. Another partner was WIELS Brussels, one of the leading contemporary art centers of Europe. It hosts temporary exhibitions by national and international artists and residencies. The art center invited Yevgenia Belorusets to participate in a monthly workshop for Ukrainian refugees currently living in Brussels and organized the transport of the table to its premises for this occasion.

Can you tell us some more about the design of the project and its stages?
The Ukranian artist Yevgenia Belorusets started her series of texts with the name “A Wartime Diary” on February 24th of 2022 in Kyiv. Her diary was part of the exhibition “This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom” at the Venice Biennale in November 2022.  EUNIC Brussels and ECF commissioned “One Day More” as a follow up of this work. The development process for the metal table for “One Day More” started in August 2022 and under exceptional circumstances of Russia’s full-scale war the table was produced in Kharkiv. On the metal surface, Yevgenia Belorusets engraved one day entry of her Wartime Diary. The artwork was inaugurated on the 6th of September in the CItizens’ Garden of the European Parliament, where it was open to the public until the 29th of October 2022. Once the exhibit was done, the partners had the possibility to still show the artwork until the last day of December of 2022 and that’s when the collaboration with WIELS and the Migration Museum Brussels began. The COS EUNIC grant gave the EUNIC Brussels cluster the opportunity to continue giving visibility to Yevgenia Belorusets and her work, thus raising awareness about the war in Ukraine.

Did Yevgenia Belorusets herself had the chance to see her work on display?
On December 17 and 18 2022 Yevgenia Belorusets visited Brussels and participated in 3 events accompanying the exhibition of her piece at the Migration Museum in Brussels:

Yevgenia Belorusets met with Ukrainian refugees living in Brussels during a workshop at the WIELS Art Center and with youth from Foyer vzw Molenbeek at the Migration Museum. She shared her experience of creating the artwork and discussed its meaning with the participants. The event at the Museum was accompanied by a DJ set performed by Nikolay Karabinovych – a Ukrainian musician and visual artist.

On the 18th of December, a presentation by Yevgenia Belorusets and a dialogue between her and war correspondent Bruno Beeckman were a part of the International Migrants Day program at the Migration Museum.

What audiences did you receive?
The activities described above contributed to promoting the visibility of Ukrainian culture among local communities in Brussels and, considering the topic of the artwork, raising the knowledge and awareness of the situation in Ukraine provoked by the war, through debate and discussion emerging from an artistic and cultural presentation.

The intention was to reach local communities and also international audiences (tourists and expats in Brussels), including Brussels Ukrainian community. These target groups were reached using social media of the partner organizations and traditional channels like local media and posters.

Given the visitation data provided by the Migration Museum Brussels, our goal of reaching out to the local and foreign communities living in this community was achieved and succeeded. Almost 2000 visitors have seen the artwork during its stay at the Museum. Among them were the attendees of guided tours (from secondary schools as well as other organizations), and individual visitors (tourists, often ex-pats and foreigners).

As for the achievements of the project, all of the events were well attended, thanks to the choice of partners with an established audience and the coordination of the events we proposed with the existing agenda of partner institutions.

What made you happy in this project?
We are mostly happy to have contributed to financially supporting Ukrainian artists and providing opportunities for them to showcase their work, share their messages, and to have created collaboration opportunities with European artists. On a second layer we wanted to keep society informed about the situation in Ukraine.

Lastly, what does ‘a culture of solidarity’ mean to you? In general, and in specific with respect to Ukraine?
The main ambition of the EUNIC cluster while applying for funds from the Culture of Solidarity Fund, was the continuation of fulfilling the objective of the “One Day More” artwork, which, as a sign of solidarity, was meant to become a place of gathering and sharing. The project was carried out to ensure that Yevgenia’s message reached a further public in order to keep its awareness of the situation in Ukraine and express unwavering support for the Ukrainian people as well as to support the artist financially. We believe all of the above is also considered the essence of the European Culture of Solidarity in these extraordinary times.