Fair Cancellations Are Giving Southeastern Europe’s Galleries a Visibility Problem—So They Are Uniting for a Virtual Art Week

A group of galleries across
eastern and southern Europe are joining forces to stage a week’s
worth of online programming—including virtual interviews, artist
talks, studio visits, and a digital exhibition—while their physical
spaces are closed.

The event is the latest
iteration of Not Cancelled, an initiative
launched for Vienna galleries last month that has since expanded to parts of
western Europe and the US. 

From May 17 to 19, galleries in
Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and
Georgia will unite for Not Cancelled East x
South, organized by the
heads of Sariev gallery in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and
LambdaLambdaLambda in Pristina, Kosovo.

“We hope this will give some
visibility to all the galleries in the wider region,” Isabella
Ritter and Katharina Schendl, co-owners of LambdaLambdaLambda, told
Artnet News in a joint email, noting that they want to show the
“bigger picture of what is happening in this part of
Europe.” 

“Many of us are part of the
global system of art fairs, which we participate in to make a wider
audience aware of our programs. But we won’t be able to do that for
a while.” 

Each participating gallery will
present one artist from their roster, while many will also stage
additional programs. LambdaLambdaLambda will arrange a remote
poetry reading by artist Dardan Zhegrova. Ani Molnár, a dealer in
Budapest, will host a gallery walkthrough with artist Zsolt
Asztalos, whose current exhibition is still on view. The full
lineup of programs will be announced today on the event’s
website.

“While the overall structure we
rely on—constant mobility, art fairs, museum shows—totally crashed,
it also gave us space to re-think some things and find different
solutions, some of which would have been not accepted only a couple
of months ago,” saidRitter and Schendl. “The art market as we know
it wasn’t healthy for a long time. Maybe this ‘crisis’ will create
some new opportunities and break up the hegemonies that weren’t
really productive anymore.” 

The post Fair Cancellations Are Giving Southeastern Europe’s
Galleries a Visibility Problem—So They Are Uniting for a Virtual
Art Week appeared first on artnet News.