COURAGE

Mbledhje koleksionesh

Andrii Zvarun was director of the Smoloskyp publishing house during 1972-1992 and member of the Smoloskyp quarterly editorial board in 1978-1989. An activist of Ukrainian human rights movement in the US, he led the Washington Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee in 1976-1982, which was formed at the initiative of the Information Service of Smoloskyp. After World War II, Zvarun with his family moved from Soviet Ukraine to Germany and later to the US, where he got his degree in microbiology from Ohio University. In 1972, he joined Smoloskyp's human rights activities. He organized a series of protest campaigns against political repression in Soviet Ukraine, prepared Smoloskyp press releases, participated in international human rights conferences, including the first International Sakharov Hearing in Copenhagen. In 1977, he spoke on Ukrainian dissident movement and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Group at the US Congress. Zvarun managed to receive the majority of documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Group from the Group’s founder, Mykola Rudenko. The documents were later published by Smoloskyp.

Zvarun also took an active role in the campaign for liberating Nina Strokata, a repressed Ukrainian microbiologist and a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. As a result of the campaign, Strokata was accepted for membership in the American Society for Microbiology that later helped her and her husband, Sviatoslav Karavanskyi, to emigrate to the US.

Zsuzsa Zádori works as an archivist at the Open Society Archives. She is responsible for the audio-visual materials, but she is also a curator for exhibitions and an organizer of film events. Her primary fields of interest are the Cold War, communism, and human rights.

Painter, performer, poet, writer, director, actor, singer, founding member of the Vajda Lajos Studio and the Bizottság (Committee) group.

The parson's tape recorder and the paintings of Menyhért Tóth impressed him deeply in his childhood. In the second half of the sixties he met István ef Zámbó in Kecskemét, where they founded together the Purgatory Club, where concerts, exhibitions and literal evenings were held.

The idea of the open air exhibitions was born in these years also, what they organized from 1968 to 1977 in Szentendre. This led - as a chain-reacton - to the founding of the Lajos Vajda Studio, than later the Bizottság (Committee) group, which made them known nationwide.

His artworks are characterized by experimentation and playfulness, seeking for new - often provocative - types of artworks. He draws, paints, creates objects and installations, celebrates performances, sings, shoots videos, writes poetic texts.

The most prominent feature of his creations is free, natural and spontanious expression. Visual art interweaves with poetry, music or moving imagery in his works excessively rich in visual imagination and ideas.

In his images he delineates beings, worlds, happenings, conditions, events with a method similar to the explicit symbolism of graffiti. The streaming of his texts based on free associations are pervaded by unexpected word-combinations and metaphysical humour.

His appearances on stage are certified with an elemental presence - similarly to his acts in moving images. With his objects and installations he intends to reveal the latent power of things and the hidden characteristics of human nature with a grim, but at the same time affectionate, accepting manner.

He was the recipient of several awards, including the Mihály Munkácsy Prize (1990), Gyula Hincz Memorial Prize (1991), Paralell Culture Prize (2007), Klára Herczeg Prize (2009), Knight of Cross from the Order of Merit of Hungary (2014)