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The greatest industrial catastrophe of the history of humankind, the Chernobyl disaster, has never been the subject of an exhibition. Exhibitions have been organized of the work of a specific photographer or of children’s drawings, mostly in association with NGO fundraising, but no attempt has been made to show this huge event of contemporary history.
Faithful to its commitment to the events that shape modern times, the
CCCB came up with the idea of creating this world first on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the disaster.
Great Western photographers such as Guillaume Herbaut and Robert Polidori take a close look at the sordid universe of a post-industrial world, the world of Chernobyl. Prestigious artists such as the Ukrainian primitive painter Maria Primachenko and the contemporary Russian painters Edward Stejnberg, Igor Makarevich and Maxim Kantor, and “an enthusiast of the sarcophagus”, the young French painter and philosopher Christophe Bisson, all sensitize the spectator to a complex reality of before and after Chernobyl.
Historical, educational and philosophical, this exhibition is a contribution to the future museum of the accident, a project for which has been conceived by the French thinker Paul Virilio. It is an invitation to reflect on our human condition at a time when calamities pervade our daily lives.