FROM UKRAINE: DARE TO DREAM @ VENICE 2024

A Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia

20 April – 1 August 2024

In his work Even Further, Nikolay Karabinovych delves into the history of his family with its Greek and Jewish roots. He investigates how the paths of different nations intertwine in personal history to reflect both collective and individual memories.
In the video, the bus arrives at the Kuialnyk Estuary (Odesa region), people get out, listen to the tour guide, then take their seats and the bus leaves. During World War II, the caves near the estuary served as bomb shelters for Odesa residents, including the Karabinovych family.
After the bus exits the video frame, the music from the box begins to play. The tune playing is more than 100 years old, and its origin is unknown. It is interesting that both Greeks and Jews have songs based on this melody, but they differ significantly. The Greek song expresses love for a beautiful girl, while the Jewish song tells the story of a young man sent to war.
The artist wonders where Greeks, Jews, and others familiar with this melody might come together. Karabinovych combines the image of the drying estuary in the perpetually multicultural Odesa region with the mysterious song, leading him to a possible conclusion: they could all meet on the shores of the Black Sea.

The wooden stick in Anna Zvyagintseva's work is inspired by memories of her grandfather, Rostyslav Zvyagintsev, who was also an artist. When they walked together through flowering fields, Anna's grandfather cut sticks from branches and used them to draw sketches of his future paintings on the ground. Sticks, which were also used for games among relatives, served as materials for bonfires and fences, take root in Zvyagintseva's work. They grow into trees that carry memories of a loved one through their shoots.
“Like a tree without leaves, my soul stands in the fields” – says the note that Anna found in her grandfather's studio and included in her work. In the poem copied by Rostyslav, humans emerge as part of nature, just one of many. Thus, To Plant a Stick is a fragile tribute to a deep connection to land, family and the past that grows into the future.

Wilfredo Prieto packed the whole world into a chickpea. The Cuban artist, defying conventional definitions, transformed large into small and vice versa. Through this artwork, Prieto emphasised the unique significance of the resources provided by the earth, highlighting that the entire planet essentially depends on small grains. The piece resonates with Anna Zvyagintseva's installation, which also explores the connection between humans and the earth.
In dialogue with the work of Nikolay Karabinovych, where the stories of several peoples converge on one point, Untitled (Globe of the world) appears as a small and apt testimony of the connectedness of everyone on Earth. Chickpea, one of the most widespread agricultural crops on the planet, is recognized all over the world. Perhaps it is in such “trifles” that the most profound commonalities between people are revealed, as we all equally depend on the gifts of the Earth.

In Nikolay Karabinovych's video showing a typical European city, the blue-yellow colours slowly disappear. The image fades, turning grey. This is how the artist highlights how Ukraine's visibility within the European context continues to decrease. The video shows quite clearly how changing the parts affects the whole. The colours of the Ukrainian flag fade, symbolising disappearance — in the information space and on the geopolitical map — giving rise to a new, colourless reality.

In Allora & Calzadilla's Graft installation series, thousands of blossoms appear, scattered across the ground as though they had been swept there by an alien wind. Divorced from their usual context, sometimes with no trees in their vicinity, these flowers seem to bear the question of their lost origins. Graft’s hand-painted flower casts are made of recycled polyvinyl, and they present various degrees of decomposition, from the freshly fallen to the wilted and brown. Through the uncanny appearance of fallen petals in specific sites, each iteration of the Graft series alludes to environmental changes that have been globally set in motion by the interlocking effects of eco-social exploitation.

Allora & Calzadilla's Graft, 2024, reproduces blossoms from the sacred Baobab Tree, traditionally dubbed “the Tree of Life” and associated with inexhaustible resilience and ancestral survival. A long-living angiosperm capable of reaching 2000 years of age and originating in the African Continent, each Baobab tree provides sustenance to the entire biome in which it is located. Although nine out of thirteen of the oldest and largest Baobab trees in the world have perished due to climate change in recent years, this tree remains a central element in the African landscape and its social and cultural imaginaries. The Baobab’s existence also indexes the colonial trade routes. Tree specimens can be found in the world’s tropical regions from the Caribbean to the Indian Subcontinent. Thus, these Baobab flowers — swept by historical currents and more-than-human forces, — emblematize the fragile and at times paradoxical beauty of post-colonial life forms and allow us to trace certain key links in the ongoing transformation of global ecosystems.

Kateryna Lysovenko, in a continuation of the series Propaganda of the World of My Dreams, reinterprets the Bible in her new work, and creates a world based on non-violence and freedom.
In her practice, Lysovenko uses mythological and religious plots and images, but transforms and frees them from their primary ideological load, endowing them with new values.
The artist highlights that Christianity is grounded in clear power hierarchies, where only God stands above humans, specifically men. The anthropocentrism reflected in the holy scriptures leads to the exploitation of nature and ecological crises, patriarchal principles contribute to violence against women and individuals of diverse sexual and gender identities, and universalism and expansionism often result in wars. Lysovenko, referring to such biblical narratives as the Fall of Adam and Eve, the Creation of the World, the Apocalypse, etc., draws her own sacred world. In it, among other things, extinct animals reappear, and half-human/half-star hybrids enjoy love without falling into sin. The artist also emphasises that eroticism, dreaminess, and poetry are inherent in the Bible, and she seeks to preserve and protect these elements. She thus celebrates sexual freedom and the equality of all living creatures, envisioning a reality where war becomes impossible.

Listening Air, by Mumbai based artist Shilpa Gupta includes suspended microphones orbiting throughout the darkened gallery and between visitors. Subverting their connotations, the microphones-turned-speakers make audible words that have traversed landscapes of, fields, forests, streets, and universities. Interested in the potential of language, the artist brings together voices that have been passed on and persisted through generations. Throughout history, songs and poetry have been used as powerful critique against systems of control or as uplifting carriers of hope in times of struggle.

The installation intertwines songs like No Nos Moveron, We Shall Overcome, and Bella Ciao, originating from tobacco farms and rice fields, persisting through streets, partisan or civil rights movements, and crossing shores to places like Beirut and Beijing. Most recently, Bella Ciao was heard during the 2020 farmers sit-down protest in New Delhi. The poem ‘Hum Dekhenge,' written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz in 1979 in Pakistan, transcended borders into Indian universities and beyond, serving as a symbol of hope during recent political unrest. These voices echo with a martyr’s song from forests in a marginalized language to Nigerian poet and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.Transcending borders, the variation of voices and languages, the work creates a collective sense of resilience.

Oleksiy Sai's work from the Bombed series depicts the war-torn Ukrainian landscape, revealing the violence inflicted on the country and nature.
Using Microsoft Excel, the artist creates digital works that are exhibited as prints on metal surfaces. In 2014, in response to the military actions that Russia initiated in Ukraine, Sai began to distort his previous works. Using abrasive materials and drills for destruction, the monotonous mechanical work helped Sai release his negative emotions. The mutilated surfaces resemble Ukrainian fields, dotted with craters from shelling, when viewed from a bird's eye perspective. The artist thus symbolically combined his own work with collective trauma. Through destruction, Sai created abstract pieces embodying highly real events.
Together with the installation by Allora and Calsadilla, and the video by Revkovskiy and Rachinskiy, Sai's work draws attention to the impact of humans on nature. Planet Earth is transformed into a battlefield, narrating humanity's role in an ecological crisis.

In their video, artists Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy portray two men amidst anthropogenic slag landscapes, communicating through weird sounds and gestures. The video is part of the collection for the "Museum of Human Civilization" of the future, showcasing humanity's history after its disappearance. The video was shot at the tailings storage facility in Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region), where one of Ukraine’s most important metallurgical zones is located.
In this artwork, the tailings storage facility – a complex designed to store radioactive, toxic, and other mining waste – symbolises one of the potential causes of mankind's extinction. By exploiting the earth for their own needs, humans extracted minerals and polluted it with waste dumps, ultimately reaching a point of no return. The concept of the post-apocalyptic “Museum of Human Civilization” helps to feel the doom of such extractive, capitalist-motivated relations with nature. The indistinct communication or clanking, hammering, disputes and gurgling of humans against the background of evidence of the end of times in the landscape looks embarrassingly funny and absurd. The constant exchange of sounds by humanity does not contribute to improving the situation in any way.

In the work by Oleg Holosiy, a prominent figure in the Ukrainian Trans-Avantgarde, human figures are almost unrecognisable, appearing fragmented and seemingly dismembered by the storm bearing down on them. With sharp, tumultuous brushstrokes and intensified colours reminiscent of an impending storm, the artist captures the sensation of confusion and the dissolution of a person in an inevitable catastrophic event.
Created in 1989, two years before the collapse of the USSR, this painting captures the mounting anxiety in society on the eve of significant historical and political changes. Now, Running from the Thunderstorm is organically woven into the modern atmosphere, oversaturated with fear, amidst equally significant global changes. The external threat, exemplified by the Russian-Ukrainian war, infiltrates internally and reshapes an individual, leaving behind a bewildering path of confusion.

In their new work, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei filmed Ukrainian children who were deported to Russia and later returned to Ukraine.
Russia has been deporting children from Ukraine to its territories since 2014, since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Estimates of the numbers of such cases range from 20,000 to over one million. Malashchuk and Kimei draw attention to this war crime and at the same time portray childhood during the war.
Importantly, in the digital age, many people can witness wars and other tragic events through images. The act of observation can lead to a false sense of involvement, or a form of satisfaction derived from the esthetic qualities of the images. Authors often take advantage of this and violate the boundaries of privacy.
In their work You Shouldn't Have to See This, the artists problematize this conflict of representation. Every such image is primarily evidence of a crime, and only potentially a work of art (which should never have been created).
In their work You are not Supposed to See This, the artists problematize this conflict of representation. Every such image is primarily evidence of a crime, and only potentially a work of art (which should never have been created).

Dana Kavelina's work is a science fiction video that depicts a utopian world of the future, where historical justice is restored and those deceased in wars come back to life.
The artist shows a cosmopolitan society and at the same time focuses on people and other creatures living in the territories that were Ukraine in the past. The film depicts a society that delves into the past, creating a sophisticated computer model of history capable of recreating events from the past 200 years. When people and other life forms from the future saw the Russian-Ukrainian war, they realised that even the most accurate model could not heal the past, and therefore all the dead had to be brought back to life. The next stage involved supplementing the model with memories and testimonies from participants in past events, creating a living monument from it. It will help people live through collective trauma and establish new empathetic relationships.
Kavelina engages directly with the ideas of Fedir Tetyanich, incorporating the biotechnospheres he developed for eternal life into her film. The cities of the future in her work provide “equality of all atoms” and a horizontal organisation that considers the needs of the earth.
Therefore, It can't be that there's nothing that can't be returned, is a multi-layered video poem that asks such key questions for our time as: “How to overcome a collective trauma?”, “Can victims and aggressors coexist?”, “What will the values of the future be?”

The works of Fedir Tetianych embody a vision of the infinite human exstence intertwining with space, which the artist formulated in the concept of Fripulia.

The artist is a representative of Ukrainian cosmism and was a pioneer of performance art in the USSR. Throughout his lifetime, Tetianych created objects, installations, and paintings, while also developing his own unique aesthetic and philosophical doctrine. Tetianych's system posited that a person can be eternal in time and infinite in space, much like the radiation of light, capable of reproducing itself at any given point in space. Thus, In the Weird Game, human figures sprouting from space as celestial bodies move in a universal game.

The basic unit of the Fripulia doctrine is the Biotechnosphere, a spherical capsule with a diameter of 2.4 metres. Biotechnospheres depicted in watercolours, powered by solar energy, ensure the eternal life of humans on Earth and in space. Tetianych built his first Biotechnospheres out of scrap materials, such as branches and paper. Having approved recycling as a method, the artist thus decided that the Earth provides enough to build a device for future eternal life.

In the context of the exhibition, Fedir Tetianych’s works present an alternative vision of the future, emphasizing a non-violent, organic connection between humans and the environment. Scientific progress originates from Earth and space and is aimed at achieving harmony with them.

Yana Kononova's work records the exhumation procedure in Izium, located in eastern Ukraine. After the de-occupation of the city by the Ukrainian armed forces, mass graves were found in the Izium forests. Kononova's installation shows the scrupulous and exhausting exhumation process that preceded the investigation. During the examination, it was found that most of the dead were civilians, many of whom showed signs of torture.
The installation reflects the trauma and exhaustion of a nation and a land that unfolds with each new revelation. The image is made up of individual fragments, highlighting the impossibility of fully seeing and witnessing the tragedy in its entirety. How many other areas in Ukraine are like the forests of Izium?

In the video, two birds are on different sides of the window. The bird's breath from outside settles on the glass in tiny droplets.
The scene has a double interpretation. Despite the physical barrier, the canaries communicate by exchanging glances, and the visible breath of one becomes apparent to the other. At the same time, such silent interaction may signify the impossibility of a truly borderless conversation, despite its visibility.
A historical fact hints at another meaning. Throughout the 20th century, in both Europe and America, canaries were used to detect poisonous gases in coal mines. Since these birds are particularly sensitive to carbon monoxide, miners took them into the mines and were guided by their reactions. If the canaries fussed or died immediately, sensing the toxins, mining was stopped.
Next to Yana Kononova's work, Claerbout's video emphasises the motif of life's vulnerability. The canaries located close to each other resemble a symmetrical reflection. Their silent exchange becomes even more suspicious. From this point on, the scene shows the ephemerality of the meeting, which is hindered not so much by a physical barrier as by a tragic event.

In the Sunlight tapestry from the Unearthed series, an explosive orange wave of the sunset intertwines with the earth, branches, and water. In this series, Nkanga explores the connection between the ocean and the land, emphasising human exploitation of nature. However, while the other blue works in this series depict a polluted ocean with fishing nets submerged in its depths, Sunlight unveils a bright landscape where all elements come together. The interconnectedness of all living things is embodied here, both conceptually and at the level of the medium, through the woven threads of the tapestry. A landscape devoted to itself, free from the shadow of human presence, radiates hope. However, the fiery colour of the work and its compositional indistinctness, as the flip side of the relationship, evoke a sense of undefined anxiety. Are we looking at a landscape that has not yet been healed or is already disappearing?

In her installation titled “Lined with Shivers Sprouting from the Rock,” Otobong Nkanga delves into the intricate interplay between nature and diverse cultures. She intertwines various materials, forms, meanings, and traditions, crafting a unified and harmonious composition.
Carpet designs depicting landscapes are reminiscent of minerals, in particular, quartz or malachite. These stones have long been recognized for their healing properties, and in certain African traditions, they are bestowed upon newborns as protective amulets. Additionally, the carpets pay homage to the age-old Flemish tradition of weaving. They are connected by hand woven ropes to sculptural objects made of metal, clay, beech wood and glass. These sculptural objects house fragrant liquids, organic substances, healing herbs, and possess the ability to emit sound.
Through her work, Nkanga doesn’t oppose humanity to nature but rather explores how human traditions can emerge from the Earth’s bounty, fragmenting it according to utilitarian and enriching possibilities. By honoring natural materials and forms, Nkanga’s installation seeks to engage the viewer’s sensory perception. The artist, born in Nigeria, raised in France, and now residing in Belgium, weaves together different elements of her autobiography. She proposes a search for shared understanding among people, fostering an empathic connection with the natural world.

Nikita Kadan’s The Silhouette shows a monument to the Soviet soldier, scarred by shelling.
Kadan photographed the monument in Hostomel (Kyiv Oblast). The town was under Russian occupation at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Among other things, Russian propaganda undertook to “protect” the memorials to the shared Soviet past. In Ukraine, monuments with Soviet symbolism are to be removed from public spaces due to the law on decommunization. However, objects related to the Second World War were an exception to this law and often remained intact. Thus, it was Russian ammunition that wounded the nameless Soviet soldier.
Now there is a new wave of destruction of cultural artifacts connected with Russia or the USSR. However, this monument, damaged by Russian shelling, has the chance to remain in the public space, now as a witness.
The mute bronze face reflects a whole series of ideological contradictions. Its own silhouette is superimposed on the image and serves as a “sign of origin, brandished shame, of camouflage”.

Peasant Woman (after Josephine Dindo) is based on the image of a sculpture by the Ukrainian artist of Polish-Jewish origin Josephine Dindo. Dindo’s Peasant Woman is an example of Ukrainian modernist neoclassical art of the 1920s, which was close to the Boichukist school — an art movement that cultivated the idea of a synthetic “grand style” based on the achievements of modernism combined with the traditions of Byzantine and Ukrainian folk art. The most important representatives of this movement were repressed in the 1930s. Dindo was arrested in 1937 and most of her works were destroyed. The Stalinist terror destroyed the Ukrainian intelligentsia, most of whom were left-wing and communist. At the same time, the repression was directed against the Ukrainian peasantry, often depicted in the works of the Boichukists. Today, the political content of modernist works and the intentions of their authors are ignored due to the policy of decommunization.
Nikita Kadan’s painting reflects on the impossibility of seeing the works as they were at the time of their creation — “their context and intentions behind them are erased, shrouded in silence.” Peasant Woman (after Josephine Dindo) demonstrates the loud silence of the historical work, its presence at an insurmountable distance.

Flag I is based on a picture of a destroyed house taken by Nikita Kadan in Borodianka (Kyiv Oblast) in 2023. Borodianka was occupied by the Russians at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The artist points out that in the dichotomy of ruins and rubble, ruins are an image in culture and the historical narrative, while rubble is something that is simply taken to the landfill. The everyday environment of millions of Ukrainians, destroyed by the Russian war, is today largely in the form of rubble. In the painting, Kadan depicts them as ruins, as history depicted in pictures. The rectangle on the work embodies either an abstract composition or a starry sky. It either “closes the entrance to the picture” or shows the space “behind the ruin” First rubble, then ruins, and then — luminous spots against the rusty and the black. The path from a concrete tragic event to an abstract image captured in art is incredibly simple.

In the installation by the Kurdish-Turkish artist Fatma Bucak, seedlings of the Damascus rose brought from Syria sprout. The ancient flower, the symbol of the once-flourishing city of Damascus, is now endangered due to the ongoing war in Syria.
Locals, who continue to grow roses despite the destruction around them, helped deliver the shoots via Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to Italy. Due to the harsh transport conditions, some shoots were damaged and died during the journey. However, flowers that managed to survive a long trip can bloom in a new environment. If the roses survive, they remain in the country where they are exhibited after the end of the exhibition.

The work, as a poetic testimony, talks about the loss of a native land and the difficult path of migration, provoked by the devastating war. At the same time, collaborative work shows how hope lies in the connections between the most diverse people. Thus, The Damascus Rose symbolises resistance and the resilience of life, which, despite catastrophe, gives rise to new beginnings.
10% of the budget for the creation of this work will be given to charitable causes at the discretion of the artist.

*We would like to thank Abu Dhabi Art — Dyala Nusseibeh and her team — as well as Yanal Al-Shorafat and Manar Marzooq for taking care of these young roses, which has allowed some of them to survive and thrive in Abu Dhabi over the past few months.

The text printed in Black Ink refers to the events of 10 July 2016 in Diyarbakir, Turkey. On that date, the largest publishing house for books in the Kurdish language in the country was set on fire. The ink used to print the text of this work was made in part from the ashes of books and a house burned in Diyarbakır. The print is one of the examples of how the Kurdish language and literature have been liquidated by Turkey.
The work is relevant even now, because the destruction of culture is a strategy used to exterminate the enemy, along with physical violence, and is still used today in wars and confrontations in different parts of the world. Black Ink thus shows how a work of art can be witness to both an evidence of a crime and the ongoing political violence perpetrated against an oppressed people.

The painting Beyond the Horizon, devoid of any subject, continues the exploration of the horizon as a line of dissolution. Encased in a frame, the canvas seems to strain against its boundaries, mirroring the landscape constrained by human meanings and functions. Unlike the photographs, the landscape on canvas appears as more autonomous. It no longer captures the anxiety of a person, but rather encapsulates it in itself, together with the viewer and the artist.

In his audio work, Anton Saenko sings the poem “In Autumn, Let Grass Burn…” by Vasyl Stus, a poet repressed by the Soviet Union. In the poem, the “saddened earth” appears as a sanctuary for the lyrical character. The connection between humans and the landscape is inseparable; together, they respond to the darkness of the anxious world. With the help of sound, the artist finds another way to embody the landscape, blurring the boundaries between the imaginary and the physical.

Anton Saenko's photographs depict the landscapes of his native village, Hriazne, located in the northeast of Ukraine.
The photos, taken in 2020, convey a sense of menace creeping into a seemingly peaceful landscape frozen in time. Cinematic images, or “windows” as Saenko calls them, tell of a specific time and place. At the same time, they are generalised landscapes designed to pull the viewer out of their environment and bring them closer to the void. The half-conscious fear hanging in the air later revealed itself with Russia looming on the eastern horizon.
The semi-ruined state captured here, reflecting the village's condition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, evokes associations with romantic landscapes. Today, however, it is difficult to tell whether the damaged buildings in the middle of the misty landscape are affected by time or war.

Ukrainian actor Pavlo Aldoshyn played the lead role in the movie Sniper. The White Raven, which depicts the events of the 2014 Russian-Ukrainian war. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Pavlo joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei film a former actor who, for the first time since 2022, visits Kyiv from the frontline to act in scenes from civilian life. In the video, the soldier observes peaceful life and tries to recreate it as an actor. The shift in Pavlo's perception of reality becomes literal: everyday civilian life now feels like fiction, requiring acting skills to experience it authentically.
The artwork Additional Scenes suggests that the distinct differentiation between military and civilians, still prevalent globally, requires reevaluation. Currently, many Ukrainian soldiers are people who previously worked in the civilian sector and joined the armed forces of their own free will. Therefore, alienating the military as representatives of power structures and showing empathy exclusively for peaceful citizens only deepens misunderstandings and hinders the building of healthy social and personal relations with people who are fighting at war.
The new work by Khimei and Malashchuk sensitively draws attention to the experience of the military and reveals the conflict of identities. The film actualizes the questions “What is normality today?” and “How can two different worlds coexist?”
Performed by Pavlo Aldoshyn
Cast: Sana Shahmuradova, Mykhailo Romanov, Viacheslav Vasilyuk, Markiian Matsiiovskyi, Lyudmyla Bayeva, Dmytro Rasskazov, Halyna Melnyk.
Sound: Andrii Nidzelskyi
Colorist: Vadym Khudoliy
Сostumes and makeup: Alina Artiushenko
Produced by Viktor Shevchenko

Additional footage from the movie Sniper. The White Raven, director Maryan Bushan, producer Artem Denysov

In her work Misplaced Touches, inspired by her experience as a mother, Anna Zvyagintseva captures the tender moment of touch. Snow-white plaster sculptures embody the artist’s memories of the intimate feeling of touch between close people and the warmth that is left behind. The physical, sensual experience that can only be felt finds its visual expression here.
At the same time, Misplaced Touches has a different interpretation. When touch is forced, the physical contact depicted in the sculpture becomes unbearable. The intimate connection is severed, transforming into an accidental, superfluous, and violent crossing of boundaries.

Kateryna Aliinyk addresses a contradiction, evoking an image of the landscape in eastern Ukraine that is currently inaccessible due to Russian occupation. The work of the artist from Luhansk shows a dense piece of native, but exhausted, landscape. A pulsating gap in the middle of a gray, still space looks like a wound. The intensity of the image can be alluring, arousing a desire to finally approach the lost land. Simultaneously, Aliinyk highlights that a person's disappearance from the landscape signifies a human tragedy, to which the landscape itself remains indifferent. The abandoned landscape “becomes the main character” and independently copes with the remnants of war, leaving no room for the human figure.

In Zhanna Kadyrova's Instrument, the pipes of the organ are combined with the fired missiles used by Russia to bomb Ukraine. The artist collected shells from the Kyiv region and affixed them to a musical instrument. Musicians will perform compositions of classical Russian music on this instrument during the exhibition.
Russians actively spread their culture and use it primarily for propaganda and political purposes. And it works. The international community, which knows Russia primarily for its ballet and literature, praise Russian culture as humanistic and great. They ultimately justify its wars and war crimes in Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, Moldova, Chechnya, and other countries. Meanwhile, numerous facts of Russians appropriating works from representatives of nations first colonised by the Russian Empire, then by the USSR, and now by the Russian Federation, remain ignored.
Kadyrova's work makes the connection between Russian culture and war explicit: while global institutions continue to embrace Russian art, Ukrainians face daily encounters with missiles and other products of the imperial cultural project.

Shilpa Gupta's installation StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream consists of two flapboards that form a moving poem about love and fear, connection, and its loss. Flapboards are commonly found at transit points such as airports and train stations, displaying schedules, destinations, and so on. However, Gupta's two boards appear to communicate with each other, displaying words with unique letters that intersect. Messages that disappear before fully appearing both confuse and captivate the viewer at the same time. The work depicts the complexity and vulnerability of human connection, which is especially evident at transit points – places of farewells, meetings, and pivotal moments marking beginnings and ends.

In Federico, an 8-minute choreography, two performers touch each other with just their fingertips. Exploring queer identity and the politics of the sensual, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins focuses on emotionality, corporeality, and collective interaction. Federico embodies reflections on the prohibitions imposed on the queer community and strategies for bypassing them. In the performance, the intimacy of human connection, and the simultaneous impossibility and desire for it, are concentrated on the fingertips.
In conjunction with the works of Kateryna Aliinyk and Zhanna Kadyrova, which contemplate the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, the delicate touches in Federico highlight the vulnerability of human contact and the urgent need for it amidst the chaos of military violence. Alongside Otobong Nkanga's installation, which emphasises empathetic relations with the environment, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins' performance expresses a longing for the gentle touch of nature, and a harmonious, equal coexistence with it.
Each iteration is choreographed in collaboration with the performers and specific to that duo.
Performed by: Bassem Saad and Nomi Sladko, Boji Moroz and Sasha Malyuk
Originally developed with: Jayson Patterson and Nicholas Finegan
Federico was commissioned by Montague Space, London.
With thanks to Tim Steer.
A production by Alex Baczyński-Jenkins Studio
Studio Director Andrea Rodrigo
Studio Manager Sarie Nijboer
Tour manager Anna Posch
Management Consultant Rui Silveira - Something Great
Distribution Something Great

In the work After the End, the images of everyday life, placed under satin glass, cannot be seen, and therefore cannot be described. This is how Lesia Khomenko emphasises the ultimate impossibility of seeing and planning the future, conveying the experience of everyday life in times of war. The artist also avoids media clichés in the representation of war through images of destruction and death. This is how disaster manifests itself in the loss of the most “insignificant” things. An uneventful life becomes especially valuable against the background of the permanent tension of existence during a military confrontation.
Usually, a quiet life appears in movies and literature after the main events are over. Khomenko plays with this concept in the title of the series, prompting viewers to contemplate the future. What will happen After the End?

In Birdcage, David Claerbout continues to explore the relationship between perception and temporality. In the loop video, an image of a sun-drenched, blossoming garden transitions into a prolonged blank scene of a house exploding, then back again. By creating a visually striking spectacle of explosion, Claerbout pushes the viewer to enjoy the destructive event. However, the artist's anti-anthropocentric approach to the work places the riot of nature in the foreground, with birds taking on the central role. But their perception by the viewer depends on the moment of the video cycle – before or after the explosion, which indicates the key role played by time and memory in our contemplation.
The peaceful image of a lush garden, mesmerising and inviting, seen after the explosion is marked by anxiety and awareness of impending extinction. At first glance, the birds appear carefree, suggesting a sense of lightness. However, following the explosion symbolising their demise, the starling and the blackbird appear as captives within the beautiful bourgeois Birdcage.