Independence Day 2023

Over the years of Ukraine’s independence, we have overcome a long and difficult path of struggle. It all started in 1990 with the Student Revolution on Granite, followed by the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014. In early 2014 russia illegally annexed Crimea, which marked the beginning of the russian-Ukrainian war. On the morning of February 24th, 2022 the russians launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and since then our homeland has been enduring constant attacks of russian terrorist invaders 24/7.

Throughout all the 32 years of independence, we’ve been standing together for our sovereignty. We, Ukrainians, have been filling such notions as ‘democracy’, ‘fight for freedom’, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘self-sacrifice’ with actual meaning – not just by words, but by deeds and civic resolve. We’ve come to realize the high cost of our liberty. We’ve been paying for it in blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights. Over the past 546 days Ukrainians have reached an unprecedented level of self-awareness, unity and compassion.

What does our independence mean for us? What are we actually fighting for? What are we hoping to build? And what do the words ‘independence’, ‘freedom’, ‘will’, ‘strength of resistance’, and ‘right to life’ stand for? The ‘Motherland’ project is an attempt to find answers to these existential questions through social video art.

In her work ‘Forest, Forest’, Maria Stoianova explores and uncovers the roots of our resistance in a regular Ukrainian family. The historical continuity and the strength of family ties are found in the home videos made by a father who captures his children growing up. The everyday life of family relationships, the society’s reactions to political events, the symbols that we have created and that we now know and recognize – isn’t that where one can discover a myriad of explanations for the most unimaginable turn of events? Why did we resist? After all, our extraordinary resistive force has become evident very early on – in the first weeks of the full-scale russian invasion.

Who, or rather, what is it? What was the face of the aggressor that we saw? In the very first days we realized that this was a war of annihilation. An outright attempt at genocide. And we have no choice! If we want to survive, we must fight and defend ourselves! In this war, Ukrainians are fighting not just for independence – it is a fight for life, for existence, for future.

Lena Kovach is looking for answers in the Soviet past. In her work ‘Bad Games, or Swan Song’, the artist reminds us of the fatal concealment of the truth about crimes and intentional imperialistic distortion of history by the russians – whether it was the explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant or the coup in Moscow, when actual news on TV were replaced with ballet.

What do russians see on their TV today? What makes them so hungry for violence?

Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Bakhmut…

Torture, humiliation, destruction, rape…

Images of the horrific consequences of the occupation of Ukrainian flash quickly in Vlada Ralko’s work ‘Lviv Diaries’. The flickering of pictures, colors, lines, words, and symbols leaves no time to focus, but evoke the feeling of immense pain and loss that emerge from the depths of our consciousness.

If we want to be, we must prevail! After all, our enemy attaches no value to human life. We hear them broadcast their evil desires for us to disappear, to perish, to die. Yet, they do not value their own lives either. Continuous violence is sweeping across russia. We’ve encountered a society that has normalized violence everywhere: in their homes, among friends, in their workplaces, in prisons, in the army! Our reluctance to fall into the russian paradigm urges us to fight. We are ready to face any challenge, but we are determined to keep our dignity even at times of war. Maryna Talutto’s work ‘Letters’ is dedicated to the traumatic experience of being separated from her family, witnessing her regular life being ruined, and being forced to live in exile with her young daughter. Maryna also reflects on the choice of her husband, who changed his artistic activity to military service in the early days of invasion to protect his family and his Motherland.

The play ‘Inconvenient People’ by Alyona Naumenko and Maryna Talutto tells the story of Ukrainian women living in exile because of the war, their longing for homeland, and the severity of their unbearable loss. The hardships that we encounter because of the war do not make us victims, but rather provoke the formation of new boundaries of perception of the world – both for Ukrainians in forced emigration and for Europeans, who welcomed us. The quintessence of russian society scares us all. In russia, everyone is a nobody with no freedom or will. The threat of being a part of that horde accelerates the changes in us, and we start speaking Ukrainian, immerse ourselves in Ukrainian history, feel the urge to preserve Ukrainian culture.

On the contrary, the feeling of impunity provokes the aggressors to commit more and more crimes. They loot and destroy everything in their path. The Kherson Museum of Local Lore, looted by the russian occupiers, startles us with its empty exhibition halls in the video ‘Explosions Near the Museum’ by Yarema Mashashchuk and Roman Khimei. The museum used to contain the largest and the oldest collection of antiquities in Southern Ukraine. It featured more than 173,000 items spanning over seven millennia – from Scythian gold to World War II weaponry. Two weeks before the liberation of Kherson by the Ukrainian forces, the russian occupiers committed a strategic theft, stealing centuries of Ukrainian history from the museum and thus from our nation. Since the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the occupiers have stolen artifacts from nearly 40 Ukrainian museums.

In the video documentation of Maria Kulikovska’s performances entitled ‘Lustration / Ablution’, which the artist has been repeating since her forced emigration from Crimea after its annexation in 2014, the author lustrates herself by washing off her casts made of soap from her face, hair, and body. This way she seems to free herself from the trauma. The soap, which became the basis for the artist’s body cast sculptures, is a metaphorically conflicted material. It is used in the military industry for testing weapons of mass destruction because it has the same density as the human body and is also translucent, making it an ideal platform for testing the most efficient tools for murder. The metaphorical nature of the performance is simply striking.

We have already seen that the broken link between crime and punishment is ingrained in the russian mentality. They have no barriers, they are brutal rapists, they are thieves, they are callous killers. And we’ve already had this experience so many times in the past. How could we forget it? How could we dull our sensitivity to the danger of the enemy? Maria Proshkovska’s performance of ‘No Title Ritual’ focuses on the importance of working with experience, the consistency and planning of this process, and emphasizes the fact that it is an integral part of every path. Grinding dust into a finer fraction between a pair of millstones is a rather absurd, yet physically demanding action that we unconsciously want to postpone. But everyone has to turn their personal runner stone to move on. To remember. To never forget.

How will we remember this war? How will we pass our experience on to the new generations? How will we feel when we tell our stories to our children and grandchildren? In his video work, ‘How Will We Remember’, Piotr Armianovski is already forcing us to step out of the flow of war and think about the importance of preserving memory. So that history does not repeat itself.

Curator of the project Maryna Shcherbenko