The Experience of Presence

The opening of the photo exhibition “The Experience of Presence” will take place in the Panarama gallery (22nd floor) on August 26 at 5 pm.

It is timed to the 30th anniversary of the artistic practice of Maryna Baciukova, Belarusian photographer, member of the Belarusian Union of Artists, the Belarusian Public Association of Photographers, participant and curator of numerous exhibitions and projects in Belarus and abroad.

The exhibition introduces visitors to the author's work, presents a series of pieces characteristic of her, and reveals the essence of her many years of creative pursuits and their originality. Maryna Baciukova is a supporter of documentary and conceptual photography. The main themes of her explorations are everyday life, psychological portraits, and the relationship between the individual and the environment.

"The Experience of Presence" is a series of photographs taken while traveling in Germany, Israel, Azerbaijan, Georgia, France and Armenia in 2014–2015. They are shown in Belarus for the first time.

National Library of Belarus organizes the exhibition.

The exhibition is a visual diary of personal impressions of the countries, artistic inventions and unique images. The national and cultural colours of the countries are depicted in monochrome story photographs, very real, perfect, shot on film and hand-printed in classic bromo-silver technology, pure drawings of optics.

The experience of traveling through a cultural environment, the insights of the city and the people are layered on top of each other like layers of a tree, creating a frame, a compositional message, rich in nuances and details. One layer tells about one story (city, street), while on top of it comes another layer and another story (a meeting, a portrait), giving the previous shot depth, meaning and value. Expressive, ambient author's photo stories convey the unique originality of the country in a more extensive, subjective and delicate way than a direct photograph. The viewer gets the opportunity to flip through the pages of the artist's memory and impressions, painted with light and shadow.

Armenian music tunes, an emotional portrait of Sergei Parajanov, urban rhythms of Munich and Berlin, expressions of faces and deep eyes of Georgian people, alien city of Mtskheta, magical Uplistsikhe, puppet theater of Rezo Gabriadze, light dance breath of French public gardens, noise of Paris, picturesque Baku, the brilliant architecture of Zaha Hadid, mosques, the eternal Wailing Wall, Tel Aviv, the narrow streets of ancient cities of Israel, the Orthodox churches: everything creates a unique artist's space of experience, the space between reality and personality, between the dream and the experience of being there.

The cost is included in the price of the Observation Deck ticket.

The exhibition will run until December 19.
The end date is subject to change.

For more info: (+375 17) 368 37 37.
E-mail: pr@nlb.by