Ukrainian Art: Messages from a Lost Land

The Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan has sent video works by various compatriots to the West, whose whereabouts are not consistently known.

In a loop of more than three hours, eighteen artists and collectives in “A Letter from the Front” tell of the past of a country that is currently being destroyed.

In this respect, the title is deceptive, there are no current pictures of the Ukraine war.

Hannes Hintermeier

Feuilleton correspondent for Bavaria and Austria.

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The contributions come from Yaroslav Futymsky, Katja Libkind, AntiGonna, Yuri Leiderman and Nikolay Karabinovych, among others.

The oldest contribution "Smuggling" (2007) comes from the group REP, the majority from the past five years.

In Munich's Haus der Kunst, the videos run like in a prayer room: the viewers are alone with images that are sparsely accompanied by music.

If you don't speak the language, you don't find out what is being talked about, where it is taking place and why.

Perhaps that's why most visitors don't stay very long.

One word, however, is understood again and again: catastrophe.

Climbing World War II monuments

The stylistic diversity of the films is great.

Dana Kavelina, for example, divides the screen into two halves in “There Are No Monuments To Monuments” (2021), which lasts a good half hour.

On the left passers-by speak, the camera shows blurred images of shops and traffic;

on the right a young woman does body work, she winds her way through war memorials between soldier sculptures, snuggles up to the fighters, squeezes out between her boots, caresses or slaps them, presses the barrel of a gun into her stomach.

Commercial filmmaker Oleksiy Sai delivers a contrasting three-and-a-half-minute program in which he superimposes clips at high speed praising the ingredients of the affluent society, from cold beer to palm-fringed beaches, from ready-to-eat meals to epilated women's legs.

A consumption overkill – colourful, loud, aggressive.

Alina Kleytman, on the other hand, in “Responsibility” (2017) strides through the suburbs in the twilight as androgynous Pierrot, despite her cold white glowing shopping bags, a gray sadness hangs over the scene.

Working conditions like hell

What hell on earth looks like is shown by Daniil Revkovsky and Andriy Rachinsky in Labor Safety in the Region of Dnipropetrovsk (2018), a visit to the industrial district of Kryvyi Rih in southern Ukraine, where steel giant Arcelor-Mittal operates factories, which opened in March were closed because of the war.

The images from the mines, pits, and smelters show workers who, in the midst of the apocalypse, have preserved a humor that makes them endure it all—ceremoniously carrying a dead mouse in a halved plastic bottle to the resting place as a coffin.

Kadan's video message was first seen in the Castello di Rivoli near Turin, then in Stockholm;

it may be extended beyond April 11 in Munich.

Andrea Lissoni, director of the Haus der Kunst, says they didn't want to show anything documentary, that's what the news pictures are currently providing.

He also includes news of the death of Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravičius, who was killed on April 2 while attempting to leave Mariupol.

It was his second attempt to document the Russian siege of the city: his film "Mariupolis" was screened at the 2016 Berlinale.

A letter from the front

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In the House of Art, Munich.

Until April 18th.

No catalogue.

On

there will also be a live zoom talk with the Ukrainian artist and curator Nikita Kadan, together with Andrea Lissoni, Artistic Director of Haus der Kunst and Giulia Colletti from Castello di Rivoli.

The talk is freely accessible via the website