In the flash, 2019

A note on context:  This work was created in 2019 in Odesa, Ukraine, in response to a specific tragic event that preceded the full-scale Russian invasion. At the time, it sought a neutral humanitarian perspective, focusing on the human victims of political violence. Since February 2022, I have refrained from exhibiting this work publicly, as my position on the war is unambiguous and I want to prevent any misinterpretation. I include this work in my archive because it was among my first socially and politically engaged performative projects, and its inquiry into the body as a site of power and political appropriation remains central to my practice. However, I consider it vital that its historical and political context is clearly understood.

“The classical age discovered the body as the target of power. It is easy enough to find signs of the attention then paid to the body-to the body that is manipulated, shaped, trained; which obeys, responds, becomes skillful, and increases its forces… The docile body is subjected, used, transformed and improved. The human body entered a machinery that explored and rearranged it. A political anatomy and a mechanics of power were slowly born”. (Paul-Michel Foucault)

The tragic event on May 2, 2014 in Odessa, when 48 people died as a result of clashes between supporters and opponents of Euromaidan, and because of the fire in the House of Trade Unions, has been appropriated and interpreted by conflicting parties for 5 years. The place of the incident remains the object of the investigation without clear prospects and penalties; a place of memory that is rewritten and used for political interests.

The artist turns to the traditional medium “the body as an instrument of art”, becoming the object of expression of numerous antagonistic interpretations and tags and a single neutral position. An “docile”, but not devoid of feelings, face as a public field, as a wall for statements, reveals endlessly belligerent polemics and inability / necessity to be purified. Physicality becomes not only a metaphor, but also a trigger reminding of the main thing – human victims, which should be remembered first of all, but not to be politically identified and turned off into an “object and target of power” again and again.