On Saturday, November 30, the day before World AIDS Day, the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation together with the PinchukArtCentre and “Kupi slona” agency are to hold for the first time in Ukraine a thematic automotive ANTIAIDS-QUEST. The event will be held in Kyiv as part of Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way project – a special exhibition dedicated to the theme of HIV/AIDS in contemporary art and held on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation.
Automotive ANTIAIDS-QUEST will be conducted in a form of a thematic social game in which all participants are expected to go through all levels in 120 minutes, successfully completing all tasks, collecting keys and visiting certain locations on the route. All questions of the quest will be related to the topic of AIDS and the exhibition Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, held in the PinchukArtCentre.
Olga Rudneva, director of the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation: “It’s not the first time when we turn to the format a quest to ensure that the information about HIV/AIDS becomes more accessible to our audience. But this particular quest is very special for us. For the first time we use contemporary art in our communications, and we are hopeful that this quest will help to promote and to better understand the art works presented at the exhibition in the PinchukArtCentre. For us it is very important that the topic of AIDS is familiar to all young people so that they could protect their own health and the health of their loved ones."
Maryna Lysak, creative director of “Kupi Slona” agency: “Our agency has been organizing historical and thematic quests Fun&Smart for years, and due to their interactivity and dynamics they proved to be very popular among people of Kyiv. A couple of years ago we cooperated with the PinchukArtCentre, organizing the first art quest in Ukraine. And this time we are happy to support the initiative of the ANTIAIDS Foundation and to hold the first social thematic car quest in the fight against AIDS in Ukraine.”
Automotive ANTIAIDS-QUEST will take place in Kyiv, on Saturday, November 30, from 19:00 till 21:00. Participation is free and open to all. Registration of teams and additional information on the event regulations is available on the Facebook Safe Connection page of the ANTIAIDS Foundation: https://www.facebook.com/events/248788675278309/?source=1
The Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation used the quest format before to promote safe sex behavior while working with young people. Safe Connection Quest national games dedicated to the fight against AIDS took place in 2012 in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Odesa and Lviv. Thousands of participants and hundreds of teams from all over Ukraine were engaged in the games both offline and online, doing the tasks and searching for the information that could help young people protect themselves from HIV/AIDS.
Exhibition Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way held on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation was opened in the PinchukArtCentre on November 16. The exhibition includes works by famous international and Ukrainian artists – Damien Hirst, Nan Goldin, Félix González-Torres, Ai Weiwei, Sergiy Bratkov, Ilya Chichkan and Tony Oursler. Each of them, in one way or another, in their life or in art, has encountered the subject of AIDS.
The exhibition concept found an expression in a work by Damien Hirst, which provided the title for the show: Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way. It is the will to defeat AIDS, one of the largest epidemics in Ukraine’s modern history, and the chance to stop it, changing the history of this country.
In addition to the exhibition located on the 2nd floor of the PinchukArtCentre, the project moves beyond the museum and onto the street with a billboard project by Félix González-Torres. More than 30 billboards featuring a photograph of the artist’s empty bed have been installed across Kyiv’s city center.
The exhibition Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way is the first time international artists, the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre have joined forces in the fight against AIDS in Ukraine. The project tells the story of the art world’s response to the AIDS epidemics that originated in 1980s in New York when society was shaken by the AIDs-related deaths of photographers and artists, including Félix González-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Vito Russo, David Wojnarowicz and many more. As a reaction to these tragic losses, as well as to the indifference and inaction of the U.S. government, a powerful art movement evolved that brought together leading contemporary artists who employed traditional media as well as turning to the tools and language of the mass media to integrate their work into the environment. Key works of that period, along with more recent works, have become part of the Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way tracing, in a way, the "footprint" of the AIDS epidemic on the art world.
16 November 2013 - 5 January 2014
Opening hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 12:00 until 21:00
Closed Monday
Admission is free
This socially oriented art project was greatly supported by the project’s media partners: Prime-Group Company who cooperated on the outdoor placement of the Felix González-Torres billboards, and HITECH Company, who assisted in informing the public about the exhibition opening through the largest billboard network in Ukraine.
