Beyond Borders International Festival 2025
Festival Exhibitions
This year, three new art exhibitions will be showcased across the festival site, exploring themes of resistance and highlighting the power of art in shaping culture, politics, and history.
Date: Saturday 23rd August
Time: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Belarusian Martyrology: Lost in the Maze
Visit the Traquair House Maze to experience a new immersive exhibition on Belarusian Resistance by Xisha Angelova.
Date: Saturday 23rd August
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Earl Haig (1918 – 2009) Home and Abroad
Earl Haig (1918 – 2009) was an artist and son of Field Marshall Earl Haig whose family home was Bemersyde near Melrose. He was inspired to take up painting during his time spent as a prisoner of war in Colditz during the Second World War. He attended art school after the war and painted prolifically in the Scottish Borders and on trips abroad to Italy, France and South Africa. He became a fellow of the RSA in 1988 and is one of Scotland’s most respected landscape painters.
This exhibition is entirely drawn from private collections and contains works never previously exhibited. His love of the Scottish Borders is reflected in bold colours and a new perspective on landscape painting that was typical in the post war period and certainly influenced by his close friend Sir William Gillies.. “Dawyck” as he was known, painted prolifically up to his death at the age of 91 and this exhibition also shows examples of his early work to one of the last he completed before his death.
Date: Saturday 23rd August
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Venue: Chapel
Ukranian Icons on Ammo Boxes – Transforming Death into Life
From the Scottish Borders to Ukraine, Traquair House is mounting a powerful show of Ukrainian Icons painted on ammunition boxes brought back from the Front. In the Catholic Chapel in the courtyard of the house there is also an exhibition of Ukranian icons which are part of a project of Kyiv artists Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenkowhi, who noticed the board of a traditional icon is remarkably similar to the top or bottom of an ammunition box.
The main idea of the project is to transform death (the symbol which is the arms box) into life (which in Ukranian culture is traditionally personified by an icon). They began painting these icons on ammo boxes in 2014 and their work has been exhibited all over the world. Proceed of the sale of the icons go to the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, the largest private hospital in Ukraine fully operational during the current war helping the army and civilian population.
A Creative Scotland sponsored exhibition.
Date: Sunday 24th August
Time: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Belarusian Martyrology: Lost in the Maze
Visit the Traquair House Maze to experience a new immersive exhibition on Belarusian Resistance by Xisha Angelova.
Date: Sunday 24th August
Time: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Earl Haig (1918 – 2009) Home and Abroad
Earl Haig (1918 – 2009) was an artist and son of Field Marshall Earl Haig whose family home was Bemersyde near Melrose. He was inspired to take up painting during his time spent as a prisoner of war in Colditz during the Second World War. He attended art school after the war
and painted prolifically in the Scottish Borders and on trips abroad to Italy, France and South Africa. He became a fellow of the RSA in 1988 and is one of Scotland’s most respected landscape painters.
This exhibition is entirely drawn from private collections and contains works never previously exhibited. His love of the Scottish Borders is reflected in bold colours and a new perspective on landscape painting that was typical in the post war period and certainly influenced by his close friend Sir William Gillies.. “Dawyck” as he was known, painted prolifically up to his death at the age of 91 and this exhibition also shows examples of his early work to one of the last he completed before his death.
Date: Sunday 24th August
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Venue: Chapel
Ukranian Icons on Ammo Boxes – Transforming Death into Life
From the Scottish Borders to Ukraine, Traquair House is mounting a powerful show of Ukrainian Icons painted on ammunition boxes brought back from the Front. In the Catholic Chapel in the courtyard of the house there is also an exhibition of Ukranian icons which are part of a project of Kyiv artists Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenkowhi, who noticed the board of a traditional icon is remarkably similar to the top or bottom of an ammunition box.
The main idea of the project is to transform death (the symbol which is the arms box) into life (which in Ukranian culture is traditionally personified by an icon). They began painting these icons on ammo boxes in 2014 and their work has been exhibited all over the world. Proceed of the sale of the icons go to the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, the largest private hospital in Ukraine fully operational during the current war helping the army and civilian population.
A Creative Scotland sponsored exhibition.
Kseniya Angelova
Kseniya ‘Xisha’ Angelova is a Belarusian artist. Since 2021, she has pursued the project ‘Belarusian Martyrology.’ Initially it was Xisha’s attempt to take the baton from the artist who was brutally murdered in his courtyard in Minsk. His portrait was the first she painted. Then the list began to grow. She is an icon painter. Since she has been painting, Xisha thinks of a deep attention that should not end. Paying attention to prisoners is not only a desire to support the prisoners and their families, but also to pay attention to the mountainous repression in the centre of Europe. If she remains silent, she will be betraying something important to her and to those behind bars.
Xisha only has time to paint portraits, and she doesn’t feel it is an artistic sacrifice. She can’t accept conformism in art, it’s like an untruth, it closes her off to the perception of such art, which seeks its own benefits or adapts itself.
Kseniya Angelova
Kseniya ‘Xisha’ Angelova is a Belarusian artist. Since 2021, she has pursued the project ‘Belarusian Martyrology.’ Initially it was Xisha’s attempt to take the baton from the artist who was brutally murdered in his courtyard in Minsk. His portrait was the first she painted. Then the list began to grow. She is an icon painter. Since she has been painting, Xisha thinks of a deep attention that should not end. Paying attention to prisoners is not only a desire to support the prisoners and their families, but also to pay attention to the mountainous repression in the centre of Europe. If she remains silent, she will be betraying something important to her and to those behind bars.
Xisha only has time to paint portraits, and she doesn’t feel it is an artistic sacrifice. She can’t accept conformism in art, it’s like an untruth, it closes her off to the perception of such art, which seeks its own benefits or adapts itself.
Traquair House Exhibition Room
Chapel
Beyond Borders Productions Ltd. A Ltd company SC 371789
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