Installation view of the exhibition "Cycle of history" at Autohaus Kreuzberg, Berlin, DE, 2023

CYCLE OF HISTORY _____ 15.09.2023 - 18.09.2023

Autohaus Kreuzberg, Berlin, DE

Sofiia Yesakova and Polina Shcherbyna are artists who work mainly in painting. Their artistic practice refers to the iconographic tradition in various aspects of visual language. Through the layers of history, both use symbols and images taken from past forms. With this system, they aim to create a dialogue with the future that emphasises the cyclical nature of events in world history. "The thinking and feeling of the Middle Ages was permeated by the deepest pessimism; the world was on the brink of death, on death's doorstep." Jacques Le Goff. An apocalyptic text can precisely describe the catastrophe that we are witnessing with our own eyes today. The overall project combines two artistic positions that overlap in many respects but use a different formal language. It is about parallel dimensions of a single contradictory reality, about the human ability to adapt to any scale of tragedy, about the senselessness of war and the awareness of its contradictory nature. The death of the enemy is no longer something distant and uncertain, but has an unbearable presence. Clausewitz writes in his first chapter: "War is an act of violence, in its application it knows no bounds; when one dictates its will to the other, a kind of reciprocal action arises which by its nature must go on to the end. Just war is an oxymoron whose destructive consequences we already know. 

With artists Sofiia Yesakova, Polina Shcherbyna

War landscape in the optic of icons 2.1, 2022
Acrylic, gesso and wood board
200 x 100 × 5 cm Installation view of the exhibition "Cycle of history" at Autohaus Kreuzberg, Berlin, DE, 2023