Your Country First — Win With Us

“With the project Your Country First — Win With Us it was important to say that we understand, from the Ukrainian point of view, that every nation wants to place its own country and its citizens first. It’s right. But if you think about this, and put that thought experiment to an end, it also means that you have to support Ukraine in winning the war against Russia, as that is simply in the national interest of every individual country we are speaking to. At the same time, in this exhibition, we show how much closer the threat is coming. Every day, it’s coming a few kilometres closer to Europe, something you can feel by the opening of the work, Birdcage by David Claerbout, made in 2023, which shows, on the one hand, a perfect paradise in which Europeans are living, and, on the other hand, the looming threat of war that is coming closer at a very, very slow pace towards Ukraine. We combine it with the work of Oleksii Sai, a new production for Davos, with the word Воля, which means two things: one, freedom; the other, will. A combination we don’t know in English or other languages, that one word can mean freedom and will. This means for Ukrainians and in Ukrainian, that you have to have the will to defend freedom, and if you don’t have freedom, you don’t have will. And I think that’s an important lesson we can give to Europe: that the will to defend freedom is as important as freedom itself. This is what we show here in the context of looming threats to the world,” Björn Geldhof, artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre, commented on this year's theme.

Oleksii Sai spoke in more detail about the idea and motivation behind the work: “This work intends to continue the dialogue with the outside world, to tell the story of Ukraine, and to deepen the understanding of our country and the values that are important to us. 'Воля' is a word that encourages reflection and dialogue. During this event, people gathered to discuss various ideas, and perhaps this word will inspire world leaders to engage in new conversations. 'Freedom' is a concept understood by everyone, as it exists for each person here. However, 'воля' (in the sense of will) is something that makes you think. It seems as though you always have it, but that’s not the case.”

“This work was filmed at Kyiv railway station. Today, the railway is a place where the lives of Ukrainians, both civilians and military personnel, intersect. The train remains the most convenient and fastest means of travel in Ukraine. Every day, every minute, trains arrive and depart—from the east to Kyiv, from Kyiv to other cities, and vice versa. Here, people reunite after long separations or bid farewell for years. What may seem like a typical domestic scene takes on far greater significance during wartime?” shared the story of the work’s creation, co-author Yarema Malashchuk. “Another part of the work focuses on the arrival of a train at La Ciotat station, an allusion to the first-ever film screening in cinematic history by the Lumière brothers. During that historic event, the audience famously fled in fear as the image of an approaching train appeared on screen. In this case, it is the arrival of an evacuation train carrying wounded Ukrainian soldiers at Kyiv railway station. Such a large-scale evacuation by train has not occurred in Europe since the Second World War. For Europe, the arrival of such a train should be no less unsettling than that first cinematic screening. We deliberately kept the footage to 20 minutes and avoided dynamic editing to contrast this imagery with the rapid cuts and sensationalism typically found in news reports about the Russian-Ukrainian war.”