The publication When the Sun Is Low – The Shadows Are Long offers insight into the complex historical, political, and phenomenological territory known as Belarus. It showcases the interplay between a tendency toward tradition, the archaic, and cosmology on one hand, and a pursuit of a purer form of modernist avant-garde on the other.
Theoretical texts, poems, and interviews in English and Belarusian language frame the work of 20 Belarusian artists, reflecting various forms of resistance against repressive systems. These forms include the appropriation of ritual practices, artistic expression in the form of amateur cosmology, or the invention of a new language and game. When the Sun Is Low – The Shadows Are Long is based on a group exhibition that was shown under the same title in 2022 at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok and the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig.
Anna Karpenko, born in 1985 in Minsk, Belarus, currently resides in Leipzig as a curator and author. Her curatorial practice and research focus on the connections between archaic and contemporary forms of existence.
