POLIFONIIA _____ 14.10.2023 – 15.10.2023
ZIRKA space, München, DE
All of this is polifoniia. Polifoniia is a theatrical installation, polifoniia is making a camouflage net together, polifoniia combines performances, talks, music, voices of people who talk about their lives. Polifoniia is a safe space, a festival of getting to know each other. But polifoniia is also the changing rhythm between everyday life and daily rocket attacks, between the desire for light-heartedness and the flood of hourly news. You can hear stories that reflect the familiar and the horrific. Stories from people who directly experience the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine - in their own homes, at the front, on the run.
Curated by Jan Struckmayer and Nastia Stemenko
Duo exhibition with artist Olena Pronkina
The series Blind Zone is executed in the technique of icon painting, but without images. Instead of visual representation, there is a glossy surface in which the viewer sees their own reflection. The reflection is blurred, indistinct, creating a subtle tension, the same kind of cognitive discomfort we experience in the chaos of information. The “numeric screen” of the media and death counters turn grief into abstraction. The glossy surface functions like a screen onto which the imagination projects its own content. There is no physical body. A number doesn’t smell of blood, doesn’t cry, doesn’t decay. The icon board is stripped of the image of suffering; instead of a wound — there is emptiness. Through repetition, these works speak to the continuity of violence in history and how easily tragedy becomes statistics. When people die, we see only numbers. The panels are identical, repeating like news headlines from new conflicts. This rhythm levels out perception and gradually dulls our reaction. We keep looking, but no longer feel. This uncertainty generates internal stress — a kind of anxiety where danger is present but the object remains unformed.
Text by Sofiia Yesakova
Installation view of the exhibition "Polifoniia" at ZIRKA space, München, DE, 2023
Blind Spot. 1.1-1.1.5. Installation view of the exhibition "Polifoniia" at ZIRKAspace, München, DE, 2023. Close-up.