The comprehensive, international group exhibition No Feeling Is Final. The Skopje Solidarity Collection revolves around the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Skopje’s unusual collection of modern works, as well as the historical and political context of this extraordinary project.

After the massive earthquake that hit Skopje (then Yugoslavia) in 1963, there was a huge effort to help rebuild the devastated city, as a large-scale gesture of international solidarity. The decision was made to establish a museum of contemporary art as a key cultural element of the reconstruction, and thousands of works were donated to Skopje by artists from around the world.

The collection of MoCA Skopje represents both a time capsule of international art at a moment when modernism was still in its prime and a rare artistic encounter across the Cold War divide between East and West: it includes many artworks by predominantly white and male figures who will be well recognizable to an art-loving public, but it also goes beyond the established canon of modernism and incorporates often fascinating works by artists who hail from the former Eastern bloc, as well as from the Global South.