Garage33.Gallery-Shelter (Kyiv, Ukraine), in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme and HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (Helsinki, Finland), is proud to present the exhibition project “Permanent Home of Displacement”! The opening will take place on August 8 at 19:00 at the Garage33, located near Syrets metro station in Kyiv. With this project, the independent artist-run space Garage33 officially launches its activities and marks its presence on Ukraine’s cultural map.
“Permanent Home of Displacement” is an interdisciplinary art project bringing together the voices of five Crimean Tatar artists currently living in exile, in a state of permanent mobility and fragmented sense of home. The exhibition explores how the personal experience of losing one’s land, culture, language, and roots can be transformed into a new form of artistic expression. What is “home” for those who were forced to leave theirs behind? How can fragments of a lost identity be reassembled to create a symbolic space for restoration and resistance?
Participating artists: Yusuf Abibulaiev, Renata Asanova, Emine Ziyatdin, Sevilâ Nariman-qizi, Elmira Shemsedinova
Curators:Maria Kulykivska [Kulikovska] (Ukraine) and Dana Neilson (Canada–Finland)
Residency curator: Vita Kotyk (Ukraine)
Project manager: Sviatoslav Mykhailov (Ukraine)
Project coordinator: Jaana Denisova-Laulajainen (Finland)
Founders and producers of Garage33: Oleh Vinnichenko and Maria Kulykivska [Kulikovska]
Throughout the past month, the artists have participated in the eponymous residency in Kyiv, exploring Crimean Tatar heritage, studying archives at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, and the PinchukArtCentre Research Platform. They attended lectures and workshops on decolonial practices, embodied knowledge, and memory work, while creating new artworks that intertwine personal memories, the collective memory of Crimea, and the ongoing context of war and occupation.
The exhibition presents a polyphonic portrait of contemporary Crimean Tatar culture in exile, shaped by bodily, spatial, and political vulnerability. The project views the state of permanent displacement both as a historical trauma and as a potential space for new solidarities, communities, and visual languages that emerge through rupture. It openly acknowledges that in the face of war and colonial violence, even the search for a home becomes an act of resistance—and a creative gesture.
This is also my home. My Crimea. Not imagined or romanticized, but lived on the harsh steppe land—a place where memory and identity are intertwined through the experience of survival.
Before the idea of Permanent Home of Displacement emerged, we hesitated for a long time about launching Garage33 as a physical space. We couldn’t find the right exhibition to begin with—until this one. We are deeply grateful to all the artists involved in this project. Their works and their approach to expression go far beyond the postcolonial visual codes typically expected for ‘conventional consumption.’
My personal goal is for this project to help audiences in Ukraine and beyond see the art of Crimean Tatar artists first and foremost as contemporary art: relevant, bold, international, free of colonial stereotypes—and capable of resonating powerfully on the global art scene,”
— Maria Kulykivska [Kulikovska], Artistic Director of Garage33 and co-curator of the exhibition.
This exhibition is the public outcome of the first edition of the Permanent Home of Displacement residency, organized by the independent initiative Garage33.Gallery-Shelter (Kyiv) in partnership with HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (Finland) and Ukraine Solidarity Residencies, with support from the European Union through the House of Europe programme.
Project partners: Crimea Platform Office, Ukrainian-Danish Youth House, National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, PinchukArtCentre Research Platform, National Art Museum of Ukraine.
Media partners: Sensor Media, МіТЄЦ, Marie Claire.