I am tending my mother's garden: I help her with old cherry branches. Where there are no flowers or buds, cut them off. It used to hurt me to even watch someone pruning trees. I go to the greenhouse and pull up grass between the seedlings with my fingers. The earth gets stuck under my nails. I look at my palms and know for sure that they are dirty with soil. But my eyes see dried blood.
The front line is unstable. Some cities let this line pass through them several times. Others are inching closer to it, although you would never think settlements could walk. The land, envisioned by many cultures as a symbol of the life-giving mother, eventually takes in murdered people’s bodies. Not only wheat sprouts from the black soil—if we listen closely, we will hear stories speaking to us through the layers of ground. Are we ready to listen to the stories of the dead? Are we ready to hear the stories of the living?
Today, Ukrainians are collecting evidence of Russian aggression: photographs, documentary reports, missile fragments, and bricks of broken houses. But they are also collecting human testimonies. The stories of our grief and our strength are also proof of this war, but they contain so much more than just dry documents.
The Soil under My Nails Reminds Me of Dried Blood brings together many stories and testimonies. The Secondary Archive project, featuring the artists represented in the exhibition, started out as an attempt to capture the direct speech of women artists while their role in the artistic environment is still fragile. When men start wars, women's voices can become quieter. Northern Cultural Capital, a non-governmental organization, has collected testimonies of women who survived the Chernihiv Oblast’s occupation. The work by Olha Kuzyura whose family also comes from the Chernihiv region was created in a dialogue with these stories. Kinder Album presented a series of works inspired by obituaries and stories of memory from the liberated Kharkiv Oblast collected by the Memorial project. In her work, Daria Molokoiedova engages with the image of her own childhood home, which remains inaccessible in the frontline city of Kramatorsk. Marharyta Polovinko, a volunteer paramedic, paints landscapes with her own blood: sometimes abstract, sometimes you can recognise the scenery of her native Kryvyi Rih. They are echoed by Dasha Chechushkova’s Black Sea panorama, which the artist captured after the Russians blew up the Kakhovka Dam. Finally, this dialogue extends beyond the current war in Ukraine. Anna Zvyagintseva refers to the advice she heard as a child to always have sweets with her.
I remember the 'first' thunderstorm. How many new ‘first’ things have occurred since the beginning of the full-scale war? I looked out the window and saw May’s lightning. I knew for sure it would be followed by thunder. But my ears heard an explosion.
Alya Segal
Organiser: Artsvit Gallery, Dnipro
Partner: The Naked Room, Kyiv
Curated by: Alya Segal
Participants: Kinder Album, Anna Zvyagintseva, Olha Kuzyura, Daria Molokoiedova, Marharyta Polovinko, Dasha Chechushkova