The term «decommunization» is a state policy of liquidation of the ideological heritage of the Soviet period of history, which manifested itself actively in 2014-2017 as a ban on the communist party and its symbols, demolition of monuments, changing toponyms and other names, criminalizing open statements of communist ideas. The process of decommunization has begun during the disintegration of the Soviet Union and was intensified at the time of «Leninopad» during the political crisis in 2014. It was legalized by the Verkhovna Rada’s package of laws that came into force on May 21, 2015. The internal decommunization of ourselves, the authors of the exhibition, has begun much earlier. We were fed by the breakfast of the «octobers», the lunch of the «pioneers» and the supper of the «komsomol». We got rid of ideological chains by transforming the boring stamps of Homo Soveticus. Remoteness and irony became a technology that allowed to reform obsolete dogmas into the new lightweight objects of art. Simple artistic gestures contributed to changing the encodings of the materials used. It became the practice of transformation of a velvet banner sewn with gold silk into an ordinary cozy robe, or a demonstration banner, into a light-fitting dress. In parallel, the products were created from conventional materials in the aesthetics of the Soviet period, using its symbols, leading to the integrity of the imaginative solution. Irina Dratva and myself have created a mini collection of jackets in 1988 for a certain republican exhibition of young artists. It was not particularly greeted and was put somewhere on the edge of the exhibition. We were not invited anymore. But what a fun was it for ourselves… Ivan Ren had created a star-shaped dress in the same context: quality model of clothing + irony = object of art. And now as the time has passed we wish to finally get away from the “scoop” and to fixate the time. We say goodbye to the past in this exposition.
V.Umanenko, October 2017.