MASTER/APPRENTICE PROGRAM, AiR & EXHIBITION
Artist: Leka Dereviankina
7 June 2024 – 27 July 2024

A Port Journey’s collaboration with the Art Indeed Foundation & the Bierumer School

Leka Dereviankina (Ukraine) works interdisciplinary, she makes idiosyncratic drawings and combines these with paintings and collages, sculptures and video installations. The more stories can be connected to a work, the more power it has for her. A strong charge brings an image to life more easily. Leka tries to create forms and images that radiate life and energy, that can resonate with stories and events, or show the essence of the world around us.

She likes to work in public spaces, on the train or on the street, especially in intimate situations. Leka looks for the ordinary and puts it on paper in sharp lines, with humor, inspired by what she hears is being said around her.

She is fascinated by capturing time in images in different ways. In addition to drawings, she uses video recordings as raw material to experiment with. Last year she started a collaboration with two nuclear scientists, in an attempt to get a better grip on the concepts of time and space. As an artist, she mainly searches for the boundaries and the connections between science and art. Einstein’s theory with which he turned the concept of “time” upside down, as a dimension next to the everyday three-dimensional space, endlessly challenges her imagination of time. It feeds her fantasy and inspires her to discover her artistic possibilities about it.

What is time? We are aware of it, we feel it and see what time does in the world around us. Time indicates the beginning and end of everything around us. Or does’nt it? We are not entirely sure. For Leka, there is still much to discover in the concept of “time”. And of course she herself needs time and focus for her exploration of time. The residency at the Bierumer School gives her a wonderful and unique opportunity to concentrate on her work for a long period.

The AiR and the final presentation are the conclusion of a pilot project in which Art Indeed, Leka and various Groningen artists worked together. We wanted to learn how to design and combine a Master/Apprentice program and an Artist in Residence program, based on the needs of the artist.

Art Indeed has designed a pilot program for this with 3 components:

1. Master/Apprentice (2 months)
2. Artist in Residence (2 months)
3. Final presentation (1 month)

Leka is linked to Miriam Knibbeler for the Master/Apprentice program and came to Groningen in March to work with her and other local artists. In May she moved to Bierum to start a work period that ends at the end of June with a presentation in the Bierumer School that can be seen throughout the month of July.

In the pilot she learned to work spatially with new materials, such as wax, clay, metal and 3D prints. She looked for new concepts, a different visual language and explored her own handwriting. The result can still be seen and visited on Fridays and Saturdays in the Bierumer School throughout the month of July.