Here I Was, 2026

workshop, house model, cardboard, glue, textile, thread, acrylic paint, chestnut leaves and fruits, toothpicks, potted plants
Workshop participants: Mashyka Vyshedska, Diana Ihnatenko, Kateryna Lazarevych, Iryna Nezhyva, Tetiana Selezniova, Vlada Tykhonova, and Khrystyna Fedorak
The work includes an audio commentary by the workshop participants.

The starting point for Ksiusha Ziakina’s project was her research into revitalization and her dream of transforming an abandoned early-20th-century building on the outskirts of Kharkiv into a contemporary art center. The artist reflected on how such an ambitious task might be approached playfully, through small steps toward change. “It is important to feel that we can do something here and now, regardless of how many resources we have,” the artist notes.

By coincidence, Promprylad Art Center itself is located in a revitalized former factory. Ksiusha Ziakina therefore created a model of her imagined Kharkiv building from a Nova Poshta cardboard box and invited anyone interested to take part in a workshop at Promprylad Art Center. In an intimate setting, seven participants, together with the artist, imagined themselves as part of the Kharkiv building and created the first exhibition inside the model of the future art center, presenting their own miniature works.

Thus, within the MUHi 2026 exhibition, inside the revitalized building of an existing art center, an installation appeared containing a group exhibition staged in the model of an imagined Kharkiv art center.

Artist’s commentary

Here I Was
And I entrust my presence (here I was), my love (Sun, I love you), my pain, my aggression (Mr. Corn is a loser) to the landscape.
I trust the abandoned building. I trust the grapevine. I trust the brick of a castle, an architectural monument that remembers me. It is a monument not only because we have called it one — it is also a monument because it is the one that remembers us. It bears witness to our presence.
A little poplar settles on your balcony — it is the first to arrive here to revitalize this building. It is a cultural worker, a vulnerable artist, a leader who allowed itself to sway, and precisely because of this was able to accomplish so much.
We set the world’s swings of fixed terminology in motion. We scratch here I was into the surface — we tattoo the world. We dance without having agreed to, while an apple tree falls through the window like a grant application, the little poplar curates an exhibition, and Mr. Corn goes on tour to Ivano-Frankivsk.
We are here.
Sun, I love you, even if you are tucked into the corner of a little leaf and your rays are sticking out in every direction.

Yevseviia Ziakina is an interdisciplinary artist from Kharkiv, where she currently lives and works. Her practice brings together writing, performance, curatorial work, and research-based methods, engaging with themes of interaction, community, and contemporary artistic processes. She currently focuses primarily on writing, curating projects, and creating performances. Together with Dykyi Vynohrad (Wild Grape), she is a co-founder of the independent institution Contemporary Art Platform, which supports the development of contemporary art and interdisciplinary dialogue. In her practice, Yevseviia Ziakina also periodically works with participatory approaches, particularly playback theatre and Authentic Movement, exploring the possibilities of collective experience, embodiment, and co-creation.

Photographer: Anton Sorochak

Photographer: Evelina Protsak