SOSкa Group. Barter. 2007. Action
Work Description
To carry out this action, members of the SOSka group went to the village of Prokhody near Kharkiv with printed reproductions of works by famous world artists (including Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and others) to symbolically exchange them for locally produced food products. Offering reproductions to the villagers, the artists discussed with the locals the motivation behind their choice of images, their placement in the interior, and also bargained over the price of the artwork (they were offered forty kilograms of potatoes, three dozen eggs, and a live chicken). The work Barter consists of video documentation of the action and two series of photographs: the first captures the buyers together with the acquired works, the second, created later, documents the reproductions in interiors.
In the mid-2000s, the SOSka group actively addressed the problems of the art market and the global economic crisis, as well as its impact on the economic situation in Ukraine. The performance “Barter” challenges the growing commercialization of contemporary art, which makes it less accessible not only for ownership but also for direct viewer experience. Accordingly, the use of reproductions of works by world art stars instead of originals, as well as the barter exchange in a village whose residents mostly remain outside the art field and art market, even more clearly illustrates the unequal distribution of resources and access to them under capitalism.
Researcher Comment
From a temporal distance, this work can acquire a critical reading regarding the positioning of the artists: from what position do they address the villagers who became the heroines of the work? Discussing the issue of the agency of the film’s protagonists, Hanna Kryventsova points out that the ridicule of the tools and trends of contemporary art is primarily directed at the artists themselves, not the local villagers [1]. Mykola Ridnyi, in turn, draws attention to the boundaries between reality and play, as well as between performance and cinema [2]. The work, conceived in the genre of actionism, goes beyond performative improvisation and involves elements of a directed narrative (in particular, the chicken off-screen was returned to its owners). Although from the perspective of the development of the collective’s practice and the broader artistic context in Ukraine, the issue of cooperation conditions has gained importance, works from the early 2000s do not yet focus on them. In this action, the artists tried to move away from a possible educational gesture and instead focus on the symbolic dimension and the conditionality of the exchange itself.
- From a research interview with Hanna Kryventsova in July 2025.
- From a research interview with Mykola Ridnyi in April 2025.
