What should you say in the wake of war? What do you feel? What do you remember?
Answers to these questions have pervaded the walls and halls of Lviv's Jam Factory Art Center in Western Ukraine, as art pieces part of a new exhibition dubbed "Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us."
Such exploration of intimate and vulnerable moments is the core theme of the new show, which is defiantly open amid the ongoing Russian invasion, at least through March 10.
Ukrainian 'War Confessions' and Introspections on Show
The exhibition, curated by Kateryna Iakovlenko, Natalia Matsenko, and Borys Filonenko, brings together candid emotions, feelings, and expressions that represent the Ukrainians' heartbreak after being displaced from their nuclear-threatened homeland.
This concept is exemplified in an art piece by Bohdana Zaiats, which is a collection of printed confessions that the artist collated by utilizing online Google Forms. Each vulnerable entry provides a vivid view inside the hearts and minds of Ukrainians.
"I want to kill my father for his Soviet beliefs," said one entry. "I feel ashamed that I miss my cats more than my own dad," said another.
In another exploration of this concept, the curators take the traditional medium route and assemble a panoramic installation featuring a five-painting piece by artists Oleksandr Hnylytskyi and Oleg Holosiy called "The Defence of Sevastopol," dated between 1991 and 1992.
It is an allusion to an earlier panorama piece by Russian painter Franz Roubaud in 1904, which depicts the 1854 to 1855 Crimean War.
Hnylytskyi and Holosiy's iteration is an almost prescient piece that depicts scenes of the future despite being intended to reflect the past, especially in reference to the recent 2014 annexation of Crimea.
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Honoring Wartorn Memories with Katya Buchatsa and Open Group
The work of Katya Buchatska, a Ukraine pavilion representative at this year's Venice Biennale, on the other hand, is a more recent piece utilizing the modern medium of videos. Titled "This World Is Recording," the 2023 work focuses on the razed land to convey loss and grief.
The recording shows a harrowing scene of homes that are either destroyed, occupied, or barred from the visitation of their previous inhabitants. The physical imagery creates a sense of the void the survivors feel in the wake of losing their places in the country.
Open Group, a collective of Ukrainian artists who are set to represent Poland in the 2024 biennale on short notice, also relied on the audio-visual medium for their featured work in the exhibition.
That work is a film piece called "Repeat After Me," which features Ukrainian men and women imitating sounds that are usually heard amid war.
In one section of the short video, a woman from Ukraine's Luhansk region named Svitlana imitates the droning noise of a Russian attack helicopter with her: "tr-tr-tr," depicting a dry image of the KA-52 Alligator slicing through tanks and infrastructure using a fusillade of bullets.
This exhibition is a reminder that war not only imprints destruction across the lands, it also blackens the memories of those who used to live in them.
