Open Group

Open Group is an artist collective founded in Lviv in 2012 by six artists, with Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, and Anton Varga as its permanent members since 2019. Working as both artists and curators, the group centers its practice on collective work, often involving people from other fields, and structures many projects as what they call "open situations," explorations of how people interact with particular spaces. Members of the group have also run independent art spaces in Lviv, including Detenpyla Gallery.

Much of their recent work responds directly to the war in Ukraine. In their installation Repeat After Me II, civilian refugees reproduce the sounds of weapons they remember and invite viewers to repeat after them in a karaoke format. The first film was shot in 2022 in a camp near Lviv for internally displaced people, and the second, from 2024, features refugees now dispersed around the world. The work represented Poland at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), and in 2019 the group curated the Ukrainian Pavilion. Their work has been shown at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Bozar, Belvedere 21, the High Line, and the 8th Yokohama Triennale, and is held in the collections of Zachęta, Serlachius, and KADIST. They won the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2015 and received an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica in 2024.

Open Group's multimedia project Backyard, which deals with losing one's home to war, was included in Camera Obscura (2023), the exhibition that reopened Voloshyn Gallery's Kyiv space during the war. On November 29, Voloshyn Gallery opens a solo exhibition of the group's work in Miami, curated by Marta Czyż.