Blind print, paper, 2021-2022
The project dummarizes research on the history of an apartment of a Jewish family that perished in the Lviv ghetto. In that apartment, Olha Kuzyura created an installation that exploses elements of the interior preserved from the former owners.
Installation executed in the Reyzele technique recrestes a motif of a traditional ‘Mizrah’ (Hebrew for ‘East’) composition that would always appear on the easter wall of the building, marking the sirection to Jerusalem. During the presentation that took place inside the apartment, the composition was placed in the walled-off passageway to the lost part of the flat. It was important for the artist to create a space for discussion and encounters to collectively discover stories erased from the city space and to return them to collective memory.
Olha Kuzyura turns to erased and destroyed stories of others to discover her own. Her mother's family was forcibly deported during Operation Vistula, and most of the documents and material evidence for that were lost. Thus, referring to the general history helps the artist to step closer to her own history and to recover connections with the past. Collective knowledge fills up the voids of her personal history, and the personal sheds light onto the collective experience.
The research took place as a part of the "Modernism for the Future".
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A book was published to present the work as part of the exhibition "Between Farewell and Return", which covers the process of researching the location and creating the installation from 2021.
Self-published project was formed on the basis of conversations between all participants of the international residency "Modernism for the Future 360 / 365" - which in 2020-2022 united four European cities with a series of events: Lviv, Kaunas, Kortrijk, Brno. The book presents the research component of the residency, the peculiarities of working with participatory practices during the lockdown.
The book is sewn by hand in 3 copies.The condensed online version is available:
book online
Photo - Oleksandr Popenko, Olga Kuzyura
"MoFu 360/365" aimed to form a close connection between the work of art and the place and the meanings given to it by the townspeople. Site specific project "Shared memory. Act of Remembrance" has an antopological character and became an attempt to create a dialogue where it is not expected. The work highlighted the impact of given meanings when an unimpor tant detail ceases to be mute. As a result, an oppor tunity to reorganize our memory and experience is formed. In each generation, we rediscover the meanings and values embedded in the material past, thus incorporating it into the culture of today.
The exhibition "Between Farewell and Return" is presented at the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv from May 30 to August 4, 2024.
Mystetskyi Arsenal:
"This is an exposition about real and familiar places, to which it is now impossible to return due to occupation or military operations. Therefore, they turn into ephemeral and fluid spaces of memories. Through artistic practices, artists approach these places, reconstruct family stories and childhood landscapes, reflect on the intersection of cultures and resistance to oblivion.
The focus of the exposition is not only on the experiences of loss during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The exhibition tells about repeated experiences of expulsion from their native places over the course of a century: from the history of Ukrainian DPs (displaced persons) during the Second World War and those who had to leave their homes due to the flooding of territories during the construction of the Kremenchuk HPP, to the loss of a home in modern Donetsk and Luhansk regions .
In addition to contemporary Ukrainian art, the exhibition will feature archival materials from private collections, namely memories, correspondence and diaries of DP (displaced persons).
In general, the exhibition will present the works of 17 Ukrainian artists: Kateryna Alyynyk, Piotr Armyanovskyi, Hryhoriy Bondarenko, Andriy Dostlev, Kateryna Yermolaeva, Alevtyna Kahidze, Olha Kyzyura, Vitalyi Kulykov, Nina Lahuta, Zoya Laktionova, Georgy Mamardashvili, Eliza Mamardashvili, Daria Molokoyedova, Sevili Nariman-kyzy, Victoria Rosenzweig, Yuriy Soloviy, Dasha Chechushkova."
Curators of the exhibition: Natasha Chychasova and Asya Tsisar.
Junior curator: Anastasia Garazd.
