HOW YOU DARE? is an artistic residency project for Ukrainian artists that the City of Milan supported and hosted at the Fabbrica del Vapore between 2022 and 2023. The project was born from the sincere desire to offer artists affected by the war in Ukraine the possibility of normalising their social life through the opportunity to continue their artistic production.
Through their extraordinary creativity, the artists involved proved that art can be a powerful tool to deal with war trauma and give voice to those who are disre-garded. The final exhibition of the project Rolling Refugees Home Museums On Wheels is an invitation to reflect on the resilience of the human soul and the ability of art to inspire hope and renewal.
The city of Milan promotes and enthusiastically participates in initiatives such as this, wherein art bridges cultures by combining narratives and experiences of two distant, yet intrinsically linked lands, connected through the thread of humanity.
The title of the exhibition Rolling Refugees Home Museums on Wheels – heid at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan last April – contains the keywords that embody the essence of the long artistic residency developed in response to the Ukrainian war crisis: Rolling Refugees Home Museums On Wheels.
As refugees, the artists fled dire circumstances, yet they were not exempt from the burden of what had happened and was happening in their country. The artists collectively Shared an experience of living in a sate yet temporary place. The reality that they perceived during their residency was transposed in its final restitution into an exhibition space, the museum, which was also inhabited by the artists and became the continuation of their creation process as they built environments and artworks until the very last day. The works were designed to be on wheels to opti-mise their transportation and allow them to swiftly leave, following the finissage, to new destinations and adapt to them, however precarious they might be.
The residency was created under the banner of Article 11 of the Italian Constitution and ran by Ukrainian curator Sergey Kantsedal and artist Alina Kleytman.