On the Edge Fest
On the Edge Fest – a new festival format about border conflicts through a camera lens first presents Ukrainian documentary photography, including various locations around the city and visions from twelve authors, four of which can be seen in the creative city.
Anna Melnikova. “City No Name”
Maxim Dondyuk “Apeiron”
Maxim Dondyuk “Traces of War”
Shilo group “Chronicle” (Sergiy Lebedynskyy and Vladyslav Krasnoshchok)
The projects of the authors have been curated by Okapi gallery curator Temuri Khvingia, and co-curator Andrii Mur, a Ukrainian street and documentary photographer living in Estonia.
The exhibition is prepared in cooperation with the festival Odesa Photo Days (Kateryna Radchenko), the association of the Ukrainian street photographers community, and the founder of Untitled magazine (Mikhail Palinchak).
On the Edge Fest will be open 24/7 in the Telliskivi Creative City Outdoor Gallery (Telliskivi 60a, Tallinn) until October 20. In addition, as part of the festival, an exhibition has already been opened in OKAPI Gallery and on the Baltic Station Art Street, next one will be opened in the restaurant Lendav Maaler on August 21. Visiting is for free.
On the Edge Fest is a new long-term project, the content of which is to take a closer look at borderline conflicts in different regions, especially where there has been war or other current social problems. The ambition of the project is to develop it into a thematic and regular festival, which involves various institutions and partners and includes both indoor and urban spaces for a visual display, as well as educational and additional programs.
The pilot phase of the project is an exposition of Ukrainian photo art, which explores the hidden tensions, as well as geopolitical, psychological, and self-identical fears both inside of a country itself and in its relationship with its neighbors. By describing the decay of the almost surreal periods authors reach the edges – fringe areas and fields of life, which seems to be forgotten by the whole world. This way, they provide us an opportunity to self-reflect, reminding us that freedom and dignity are genuine values of a true society that cares about its own cultural heritage and builds its independent future regardless of the sneaky intentions of aggressors who act under the red veil of common past and present.
The topic was picked in the autumn of 2021, yet it became even more relevant with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 which has changed our lives. We stand with the Ukrainian people as they fight for their freedom, presenting the works of Ukrainian authors in Estonia is a symbolic as well as an actual statement of support – the exhibition is accompanied by a charity fundraiser, as was also the case at the exhibition on Ukrainian frontline photography in the Okapi Gallery in the spring of 2022.
