Organized at the beginning of May in kyiv, the second edition of Art Kyiv highlighted emerging artists for whom the war acted as a trigger.
Severed faces of statues, sharp blades and disturbing smoke in the background: in her latest series of collages, Ukrainian artist Olena Kharakhoulakh recounts her « transformation » triggered by the Russian invasion.
In January 2023, a Russian missile hits a building 300 women from her home in Dnipro, a large city in eastern Ukraine. Results: 45 dead and 79 injured. “I realized that there will never be a right time and that you have to do what you want right away.”tells the 36-year-old artist to AFP, choked by a sudden sob when she talks about the tragedy. While she had « repoussé pendant longtemps » her desire to make conceptual art, she started the day after the strike and abandoned her “commercial work” as a designer of glass objects in a company.
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“To be reborn, we have to get rid of something. Not necessarily literally, physically, but we must destroy, kill something in us. Fears that limit us »she explains from the Lavra gallery in kyiv, which hosted the second edition of the Art Kyiv contemporary art fair at the beginning of May. To the names already known on the contemporary scene, such as WaONE and Nina Mourachkina, are added new artists for whom the conflict served as a trigger.
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“Change of perception of self-me”
Vlada Lobus was forced to leave Dnipro and take refuge in Poland. A graduate in political economy, it is thanks to painting and then photography that she copes with the shock of war and uprooting. She recomposes herself in a self-portrait made of close-ups in cyanotypes assembled in a thoughtful disorder: an eye, hands, an elbow, the soft curves of a body. “After a traumatic event there is a change in self-perception, a deconstruction and reconstruction of oneself.”she explains to AFP on the sidelines of the fair where two of her works were presented.
The war, entering its fifth year, has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. According to the authorities, at least 346 Ukrainian artists were killed in the conflict. However, the Russian invasion did not bring the Ukrainian art scene to a standstill, believes Anna Avetova, director of Art Kyiv. On the contrary, the conflict placed Ukraine at the center of attention and during the first years of the war, artists and galleries became known abroad. If invasion is no longer such a visible and obvious theme in artistic creation today, it remains a « fil rouge » Who “runs through all the projects, all the artists, all the new works, and they touch on it one way or anotherâ€believes Anna Avetova. On a wall of the Lavra gallery, a collage by Ioulia Choulga taken from a series love letter à Kiev, sa ville natale.
The Salute Hotel, with its iconic Soviet architecture, emerges from a coral reef against a bright pink background, an astronaut on its roof and a disco ball as a moon. A way for the artist to question “The fragmentation of us will come” turned upside down by the conflict. “We try to rebuild ourselves from our broken pieces, we put them back together.”she said by telephone to AFP. The spectacular spaceship-looking hotel symbolizes his childhood walks with his father in the nearby park. Employed in the field of human resources, she had no “No artistic education” when the war turns his life upside down. The idea for the collage came to her while she was walking down a street in London. Her works exhibited as far as Japan are a way for her to “Communicating with the world”.
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For Irina Tchérémissina, the priority is to show her art in her native country. In 2014, separatist forces supported by Moscow took control of part of the east of the country. She must leave Donetsk with her family for the capital, then leave Ukraine in 2022 for Spain in order to bring her children to safety. Lulled by the chorus that art “There is no path with a respectable career”she had until then worked in international trade, her creative impulses limited to the category of “hobby”.
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“Everything changed in 2022. I lost my father, my job, my house in Ukraine completely destroyed and set on fire, she told AFP. Only photography helped me survive this mourning ». At 45 years old, she now devotes herself to artistic creation, several works of which are selected for Art Kyiv. To her self-portraits, she adds paper cutting and collage, embroidery… “People can feel the textures, the different layers, and also the presence of my hands.”. “It’s important for me to leave a part of myself in Ukraineshe says. It’s my way of telling people to survive.”.
