NATALIYA ZUBAN. Condition of Suspended Present

Opening, September 9, 2026, 7PM

To walk through Nataliya Zuban's time-obstructing, auto-destructive, and self-obliterating process exhibition is an experience of intense listening. Born in 1992 in Ukraine's Opishnia—whose clay-rich soil gave the artist a material inheritance of generations of narrative sculpture—the artist's machines express the sound of contemporary waiting and sheltering; arbitrating; and the shrillness of expectance.

An auto-destruct ceramic forest of sculptures slowly compresses, destroying the ceramic spindles as they crash to the floor over the course of three months. The second hands of eleven clock sculptures tick loudly, but are obstructed by stone-like ceramic forms. Broken pieces of sculpture are thrown into a menacing, roaring, ripping machine, that grinds them down to sand—loud and deafening, it eats up all the volume of air and space, eats up the present.

If together, this is an artistic treatise on violence, it is one that describes not just what happens to the ceramics, urbanities, landscapes being crushed and pulverised; it also potently materialises how the gears that exert pressure themselves begin to concuss and self-destruct over the course of the exhibition.

Novellas is a publication series by Ar/Ge Kunst of experimental contemporary writing. Edition 15 features a photo-series, An Evening in Kyiv by Yevgenia Belorusets, and a work of fiction, Tender-Faced Friend. The first describes a light evening shared by a group of friends who discuss war, closed borders, departure, and freedom; the second manifests the destruction of language, of testimony, and of the very possibility of speaking.

* Nataliya Zuban has a BFA and MFA in Ceramics from the Lviv National Academy of Arts (2013–2015) and a PhD from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design, Wrocław (2018–2021). She works between Ukraine and the Netherlands. Her practice has been developed through international residencies including residency at Gmunden Academy of Ceramics (Gmunden, 2026), Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (Amsterdam, 2023–2025), EKWC, Casa Wabi, Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Senter for keramisk kunst, and IASPIS (Gothenburg, 2026). Her work is held in collections including Ariana Museum, Keramikmuseum Westerwald, FLICAM, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, and the National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery.

* New ceramics by Nataliya Zuban were created during the Artist in Residence Program as part of ASoP Europe (Artists’ Solidarity Program), hosted by OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH in collaboration with the Academy of Ceramics Gmunden, and supported by the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria.

* Yevgenia Belorusets is an artist and writer living and working between Kyiv and Berlin. Her work operates at the intersection of literature, visual art, and documentary practice, often drawing attention to the more vulnerable groups of Ukrainian society, including queer families, Roma communities, miners, and people living in war-affected regions. Her works have been exhibited, among other venues, in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 56th and 59th Venice Biennale. She has received the International Literature Award of the House of World Cultures (HKW) in 2020, the Schering Stiftung Special Prize for Artistic Research in 2022, and the Alice Salomon Poetics Prize in 2025. Since 24 February 2022, she has been documenting Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Project supported by: Academy of Ceramics Gmunden, Gmundner Keramik, OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria.