On November 18, Jam Factory Art Center — a contemporary art center on the territory of the former jam factory — will open on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street in Lviv. The building has been under revitalization since 2015, and on the day of the opening, the center’s team will launch the exhibition ‘Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us’ featuring works by Ukrainian artists
About the art center
Lviv-based Jam Factory Art Center has been organizing artistic projects since 2015. According to the project description, through exhibitions, theatrical, musical, educational, and community-oriented projects, ‘the team engages people in creative dialogue and enriches their experience and knowledge’.
The renovated space on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street, 124 is referred to as ‘the largest cultural and artistic center in Lviv’. It comprises exhibition halls, rooms for lectures, meetings and theatrical performances, as well as a music stage and a public space for relaxation and walks on the premises.
Part of Jam Factory Art Center will also include a permanent historical exhibition of the same name, consisting of documentary photos and video materials.
It tells the story of the building, which began in 1826, and the enterprises that operated on the factory premises at different times.
‘The opening of the art center will be a landmark event not only for the artistic community and residents of Lviv, but also for the broader Ukrainian and international context, — Bozhena Pelenska, program and executive director of the center, commented on the opening. — In the conditions of the war, we completed a comprehensive revitalization, expanded the team and prepared an important exhibition and a broad public program. Despite the war and numerous obstacles, we are reaching this long-awaited moment and collectively writing a new history of Ukrainian art’.
About the Jam Factory Art Center’s opening exhibition
‘Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us’ is the title of the first exhibition to be launched on the art center’s opening day.
It will present the works of Ukrainian artists, ranging from the 19th century works to the present. The center’s team added that the exhibition ‘is based on the principle of short stories and brings together works at two distances — between the present and the past, and between personal experiences and wartime experiences’.
More than 70 artists provided works for the exhibition, including Alevtina Kakhidze, John Object, Zhanna Kadyrova, Oleksiy Sai, Pіotr Armianovski, Nikita Kadan, Sasha Maslov and Vlada Ralko.
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The exposition was formed by the curatorial team consisting of Kateryna Iakovlenko, Natalia Matsenko and Borys Filonenko.
‘We construct paths and will gather together for several months to discuss the personal and communal, memory and history, hoping that the narrative will not be interrupted again’, the curators comment on the launch of the exhibition.
‘Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us’ will run until March 2024 in the large exhibition hall as well as in the exhibition halls on the ground floor. The exhibition will also be supplemented with discussions, meetings and curatorial tours, the announcements of which will be published on the website and in social networks.
In the fall, the Kharkiv-based formation Some People began construction of the Center of new culture.
It will combine a multi-genre concert venue, a space for audiovisual performances, a co-working space for artists, Sneaker Mate sneaker dry cleaner, a photo studio and so-called ‘philosophical clubs’. The location is a former commercial engineering plant near the historic city center.
