BY NOW

Contemporary Photography from Belarus

Tanya Haurylchyk, Siarhei Hudzilin, Eugene Kanaplev-Leydik, Pavel Kirpikau, Alexander Kladov, Mikhail Leschenko, Julia Leydik-Kanapleva, Andrei Liankevich, Aleksey Naumchik, Palina Palynskaya, Volga Sasnouskaya, Alexander Sayenko, Aleksei Shinkarenko, Maxim Shumilin, Alexandra Soldatova, Aleksander Veledzimovich

A sea change has emerged in the Belarusian art scene: young artists have shed the obedience to Soviet-era authority and are now making their critical voices heard. With its 1994 exhibition Photography from Minsk, the ifa-Galerie Berlin provided early insight into the post-Soviet developments in photography in Belarus. The title of the exhibition BY NOW – a play on words with the country’s international license plate abbreviation – promises to engage with contemporary life in Belarus.
BY NOW offers young artists a platform and viewers outside the country a unique in-depth look into the everyday life of a very different Europe. On view are the 16 winners of a national competition for young photographers. It’s hard for an exhibition like this to adequately represent this highly diverse new scene, of course, but it can visualise a multifaceted process of self-observation and is marked by a socio-critical examination of the homeland and the endurance of World War II in the collective memory.