• Denys Shantar (°1997, Kherson)

    from 06/02/2025 to 15/03/2025

HEALING PRACTICE


As a starting point for his artistic practice, Denys Shantar often uses his own memories and family history, deploying different materials and techniques to create narratives that lie between reality and fiction. In his research about childhood, religion, migration, and queerness, he links the personal to current global but also historical events, weaving in symbols from mythology, art history, folklore and Christianity. While exploring his complex identity and relationship towards himself, the world and his family, he asks himself two simple questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where do I come from?’.

Since his Costume Design studies, he started to focus on the use of textiles, embroidery and collaging in his work. Using predominantly recycled, gifted, or found fabric and materials, he gives his work an invisible layer through the object’s unknown past, combining it with the new given context. Besides his textile practice, he also creates In Situ works and/or uses curation in his artistic practice, like in his 2024’s work “The Chapel of the beloved Disciple” created for the 58th Les Fetes de la Saint Martin in Tourinnes – la – Grosse (BE).

Denys Shantar, is a Ukrainian – Swiss artist and curator, who has a background in theater. 2019 he graduated with a Fine Art  Bachelor’s from the Zurich University of the Arts (CH) with a focus on Photography as well as Drawing and Painting. In 2021, he finished his Master’s degree in Costume Design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (BE). He exhibited in several international institutions and spaces, including Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt (BE), Cas-co Leuven (BE), The Butterfly House Bunde (NL), *Altefabrik Rapperswil during Grosse Regionale (CH), BASE Milano (IT), Morpho Antwerp (BE), Middelheim Museum Antwerp (BE), Contemporary Art Institution Helmhaus Zurich (CH), Textile Museum Texture Kortrijk (BE) and Crux Galerie Athens (GR). He received the Emerging Artist Award during the 25th Gabrovo Biennial 2022 in Bulgaria. Additionally, he was granted the Royal Academy Antwerp Department Prize in Costume Design in 2021 and the CC Brugge Input/Output Aanmoedigings Prize in 2023. In 2022, he collaborated with the Museum of Modern Religious Art (MMRK) for his first solo show at the 3rd Ypres Quadrennial (BE) and continued working with the MMRK in 2023 to curate the group exhibition “CROSS-ING WAY-S” in Brussels. As of September 2023, to September 24, he conducted his one-year research project “God save the Queers – The (not so) secret Life of Saints” at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. The results of his research he presented at Cas-co Leuven (BE) at the end of his Off the Grid Residency and got invited by Koplot Brussels (BE) to produce a solo show for Supermarket 2025 in Stockholm (SE). He lives and works in Antwerp.