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Exhibition 'Censure'

l'Atelier des artistes en exil à POUSH (Aubervilliers (Paris), 2024)

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In her installation "Absence of a Plan" the artist gives a tangible, expressive form to the acts of internal and external censorship that appeared in her life after February 24, 2022. Rather than confronting these acts, she aligns with them, following their rules and considering them justified. Her work molds these experiences into a visual narrative through various media and shapes in a wall composition.

"Absence of a Plan" represents a deeply personal journey through intense topics that have impacted her life since March 2022, centering around the floor plan of her mother's apartment in Kyiv, where she grew up. The central theme threading through all elements of the installation is the war in Ukraine and the artist's dual identity, as she is half-Ukrainian and half-Russian.

The journey begins with the central piece — a video titled "Hypnotic Fraudsters", where the artist humorously explores politically sensitive themes like dual citizenship, collective responsibility (as per Hannah Arendt's philosophy), and the division of immigrants based on their passports. The video features her own passports, now rendered obsolete after 2022, irreversibly damaged in the filming process.

Following this autobiographical video, we are taken into the French context of immigration, illustrated by three textile pieces in the form of pillows

On one pillow, against the azure background of the French coast, are two of the artist’s Ukrainian friends — a young man from Kharkiv and a 10-year-old girl from Kyiv. The issue of men leaving Ukraine to avoid participating in the war is taboo, as it may impact the morale of those fighting. The artist aligns with this sentiment, choosing a neutral statement: "There once were children, women, the elderly, and men of conscription age" to classify people without attaching emotional bias or judgment. We each have our own path, and, fundamentally, we are all children who long for the sea.

On the second pillow, we see a sunny day in the Aubervilliers neighborhood, where the artist lives. The 17-minute walk from the metro to her home becomes far less inviting after dark. Yet, to the artist, this area holds a unique, raw poetics and absurdity, which fuels her inspiration and reflection.

The sharpest part of the installation -- "Don't Tell Anyone I Sent This to You", lies in the kitchen portion of the apartment layout. These are artifacts from a bombed kitchen in a Ukrainian home, sent by a childhood friend. Since 2022, Russian and Ukrainian art communities have become rigidly divided, and her friend, respecting the collective censorship within the Ukrainian art scene, asked her not to reveal the source of these items.

photos by Ivan Erofeev

views of the exhibition 

video shown in the exhibition 

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video-objects shown in the exhibition 

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