2018

On the installation and restoration
intervention
Peace treaty
Educatorium
Kyiv, Ukraine
2018

Screenshots. Video documentation by Natalka Diachenko

︎︎︎ On June 4, 2018, the exhibition space in the Educatorium cultural laboratory was consecrated according to the rules provided by the Orthodox Church.

The consecration took place a few hours before the exhibition was set up, and the very act was represented in the space with a text plate.

This intervention reflects the following topics:
— collision of the sacred and the secular;
— recontextualization and introduction of additional aspects of perception of the exhibition as a statement as well as a series of individual works;
— religion’s soft power in expansion and assimilation.

Particular attention was paid to the process of negotiations with the priest, his understanding and awareness of the situation.

Any interpretation of the situation as a performance, happening or any other artistic form, is denied. The act of consecration is not subject to any authorship, no such claims implied.

The work was presented at the graduation show called ‘Peace Treaty’, which summed up a six-months-long course of contemporary art at the Kiev Academy of Media Arts.

Special thanks to Fr. Vasiliy (Bunchak).

On the beneficial significance of heresy video, object
Naphthalene
Kyiv History Museum
Kyiv, Ukraine
2018

︎︎︎find a description at singulart ︎︎︎

On those who sleep
photograpgy, video, odject, sound
NOCH
Odesa, Ukraine
2018

Photos by author

︎︎︎ In the summer 2018, I was invited to Odessa in order to participate at the first exhibition in the newly created artist-run-space NOCH. The initiators were artist Aleksandra Kadzevich and writer and psychotherapist Garry Krayevets.

It took me about eight hours to get from Kyiv to Odessa. Having fallen asleep for half an hour on the train, I had a dream. In the end, the plot of this dream became the keynote of the exhibition.

I set a goal to recreate what I saw in my dream by interacting with the city and its inhabitants. That plot, images and metaphors seemed very close to me.

The exposition includes hand-painted photos with the dream scenery, which I searched for and recorded in Odessa for several days, a video in which I tell the story of the dream, an audio recording with the sound of the phone falling and me cursing loudly, which is heard repeatedly several times an hour, and my glasses, that never protected me from the bright light in the dream.

Find more photos and description at NOCH.space ︎︎︎

The pillory
action
3.MICT AIR
Mariupol, Ukraine
2018

photo by Eugen Korshunov

︎︎︎ The action took place in the evening of November 12, 2018 in the city of Mariupol on Gretska Street.

I was fastened with tape to a power line support and left in such a helpless state until some 45 minutes later a random passer-by released me.

Among various other things, this action epitomized some certain premonitions associated with:
— intensifying religious discrimination,
— rise of radical nationalist moods in the context of external threats,
— lack of effective legal institutions,
— restoration of using the pillory as an instrument of vigilante justice.

Article on mrpl.city ︎︎︎

︎︎︎ During my sojourn in the small town of Klementowice (Poland) I reflected upon a biblical story that had been fascinating me for a long time.

Almost every day, I reread the story of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. He deceived his father and brother and was forced to flee to foreign lands. While he was travelling through the desert and constantly sleeping under the open sky, one night he had a dream. He saw a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, and the very Throne of God was towering above. God gave him a promise and blessed his family.

The exposition consisted of the famous scene depicting the Jacob’s ladder (a small collage made of adhesive tape), several quotations in Church Slavonic from the chapter on Jacob's journey (charcoal inscriptions on cloth), a stone drenched in hand-made oil, and a video played back on a tablet.