MuseumsQuartier Wien is making frei_raum available to artists who have been forced to flee the war in Ukraine. This will provide them with a space for work, exhibition, discourse, events, and interaction. The project is an initiative of springerin in cooperation with the coordinating office 'Office Ukraine – Shelter for Ukrainian Artists' and financed by the City of Vienna. “FREIRAUM UKRAINE” begins on 6 April.  Evening events, open to the public and with free admission, are planned to take place from the end of April.

“MuseumsQuartier is a place of exchange and discourse. Is therefore important to me that we provide refugee creative artists, who currently have no opportunity to present their works, with a space in which they can formulate their messages and make them accessible to a broad public. At the same time, it is a symbol of peaceful coexistence,” says MQ director Bettina Leidl.

“We think of 'FREIRAUM UKRAINE' not only as a place for presentations and events, but as a forum organised both by all those affected and those who stand in solidarity with them, and as an easily accessible domain for diverse forms of communication,” explain curators Hedwig Saxenhuber and Georg Schöllhammer.

As a co-working space, “FREIRAUM UKRAINE” offers all artists who have fled the war opportunities for self-representation, but also for communication and exchange with the local community and with their colleagues who are still on the ground in Ukraine. The refugees include creative artists who resided in Ukraine without a Ukrainian passport, as well as those from the opposite side of the warring parties who stand in solidarity with them.

The project is intended as an open mirror of their respective developments, problems, and reactions, and of their artistic reflection. Together with students from art universities and creative artists from other cultural institutions in Vienna, “FREIRAUM UKRAINE” is a port of call for projects, collaborations, expressions of solidarity, initiatives, and presentations.

At the same time, it is a place of encounter with the local community: through special formats, the wider public is invited to engage in communication with one another. Cross-disciplinary events address the situation in Ukraine and the distortions of geopolitics.

“FREIRAUM UKRAINE” is an attempt to create an open space in this traumatic state of war: for joint-analysis, expression, experimentation, mourning, silence, and - sometimes - laughter. 

Architect Johannes Porsch is responsible for the exhibition design. Events will be announced at www.freiraum-ukraine.at 

Supported by the City of Vienna / MA7

FREIRAUM UKRAINE
Duration: April 6 to June 6, daily, 12:00-18:00
Location: frei_raum Q21 exhibition space, MuseumsQuartier Wien, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna
Contact: office@freiraum-ukraine.at 
Free admission