Ania belarusian ygallery

“Ў Gallery” links all possible impossibilities: it’s an independent organisation working as a firm; it’s the main gallery of contemporary art in Minsk and after ten years of work it’s still the only one in the field; it has a strong international presence and takes care on its strong national identity, based on Belarusian language, language that even if is the official one in the state, it’s still on the second place, after dominating Russian. And about Belarusian speaking culture in the communicational strategy of the “Ў Gallery” is that short interview with Anna Chistoserdova: Why did you decide for Belarusian as the main language of your communication with viewers and society? And why this is something special?

- We decided for that when we were opening the gallery in this place, four years ago (previously it was located at Nezavisimosti St. – AD). In current situation in Belarus, when we have got really strange position of Belarusian language, when it’s still something strange to use it officially and with our aim to show and support Belarusian contemporary art – we felt that we should speak in that language, in all our activities. Honestly, it’s not a native language for majority of people who work here, but anyhow it’s a language which we recognise as our one. And we strongly believe that through our own activity in that field we can change somehow ourselves, and as a result – people who work and communicate with us.

How does it work?

- It’s really hard to evaluate. People, who visit the gallery, know that we speak Belarusian and very often they also involve somehow themselves in that communication. But also if someone wants to speak Russian, we have no problem with that. Our website is still just in Belarusian (even if we work hardly to have English version), but all description of art pieces in our exhibitions became recently trilingual (Belarusian, Russian and English). Thus, our communication is flexible. But anyhow, when we have official speech, interviews, presentations, we speak Belarusian. In that process the big role plays another organisation which works with us, the bookstore “ЛОГВІНАЎ”, located in the same building. Their main idea is also to promote contemporary Belarusian language – through literature and they’ve got the biggest assortment of independent Belarusian publications in Minsk. They organise a lot of events showing development of the modern literature, they translate a lot to Belarusian language, they support us.

Sometimes we here comments that this is a fake “belarusification”, but for us it’s not true. For us it’s a strong idea of supporting national identity. For instance, a new generation of young people use that language and they present themselves as Belarusians. But it’s still just an everyday communication. With our case we want to stress that it could be also a language of official situations.

How do people react on that?

- I give you one example. We start next Monday a new season of weekly meetings with special public “lections”. It’s something like a language course, but in fact it’s rather a club of people who try speaking Belarusian – with special guests and about different topics. The programme is called “Mova ci kava” (“Language or coffee”) and it’s a wordplay where “ci kava” sounds like “an interesting”. It’s held by a girl from Moscow, who started that project there, but then proposed it to us, what is also significant, I think. And that series gathers every Monday from 60 to more than hundred people, who come for 2-2,5 hours to the gallery just to talk on different topics in Belarusian language! That shows how strong is that need and how important is that problem also for other people.