POP-UP SHOW BY ELENA SUBACH + VIKTORIIA VITRENKO’S VINYL ALBUM PRESENTATION
Viktoriia Vitrenko and Ukho Music have announced the release of the double vinyl album LIMBO on Kyiv Dispatch, a new Ukrainian experimental music label. It was released on 17 February in a limited edition of 500 copies, with the digital release set to become available on all streaming platforms on 27 March.
LIMBO is a vocal journey through uncertainty and, at the same time, a deeply personal project. Conceived by Viktoriia Vitrenko and developed in collaboration with the Eclat Festival, it explores the state of waiting in its broader, poetic sense and unbearably concrete manifestations. Almost all the music on the album was created at the end of 2021 and is dedicated to flautist Maria Kalesnikava, who is serving an eleven-year prison sentence in Belarus for her role in organising the 2020 protests. The vocal cycles by Agata Zubel, Alla Zahaykevych, Ying Wang, and Sven-Ingo Koch, commissioned by Vitrenko, along with fragments of Maksym Shalyhin’s 2009–2012 cycle, immerse the listener in an atmosphere of transition and liminality, focusing on those who are trapped between worlds.
The uncertainty surrounding Maria’s future, the experience of pandemic isolation, and the growing tension in the lead-up to russia’s full- scale invasion of Ukraine formed the backdrop for the performative project LIMBO, which was first presented in Stuttgart in early February 2022. The album, however, was recorded in the summer of 2022 near Kyiv, already during the invasion—an event that profoundly recontextualised the material.
Elena Subach created the visual statement of the album—the record is designed featuring six of her works. Along with a selection of other photographs, they explore the liminal space between reality and dreams. Subach is one of The Naked Room’s long-time and favourite artists. Her duo show with Viacheslav Poliakov launched the gallery’s programme in 2018. This is where Sasha Andrusyk of Ukho Music first encountered them and later invited Elena to collaborate on the future album. Subach’s lens captures the visual peculiarities of the Ukrainian provinces, transforming them into vivid photographic reports from other worlds. While her works are entirely documentary in nature, the lighting, composition, and post-processing of these images allow viewers to see the everyday life of small Ukrainian towns as a recognisable reality and a bold fantasy. What might seem insignificant or even kitsch in daily life acquires a sense of playfulness and unique beauty in Elena’s photographs.
Viktoriia Vitrenko viktoriia-vitrenko.com is a Ukrainian singer, conductor, and co-founder of the interdisciplinary group INTERAKT. She is the recipient of the Michiko Hirayama Award 2023 and a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Vitrenko has recorded for SONY Classical (music by Valentyn Sylvestrov) and AUDITE (chamber works by György Kurtág). LIMBO is her debut solo release.
Kyiv Dispatch kyivdispat.ch is a record label dedicated to contemporary classical, improvisational, and experimental music. In addition to traditional recordings, the label explores innovative formats such as audio documentary and spoken word projects. Kyiv Dispatch was founded in 2022 by the UKHO agency to document and amplify the voices of Ukrainian composers and performers.
Elena Subach (1980) is a visual artist and photographer. Born in Chervonohrad, based in Lviv, Ukraine. She has received awards such as the New East Photo Prize (2016) and the Gaude Polonia scholarship (2019). Her photographs have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the British Journal of Photography, Weltkunst, Vogue Poland, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and many others. In her artistic practice, Elena is concerned with questioning religion, tradition, the construction of history and the consequences of soviet colonial pasts. She works on the topics of fragility of human bodies, death, and war.
