Kateryna Lysovenko
What Does My Dead Nine-Month-Old Uncle Think About His Debt to the Empire (2022)
Kateryna Lysovenko, What Does My Dead Nine-Month-Old Uncle Think About His Debt to the Empire (2022), Courtesy of the artist
In her site-specific intervention at the exhibition opening, Kateryna Lysovenko confronts visitors with the terrifying continuity of oppression that her family (like many others from Ukraine) has faced for generations, losing their lives and livelihoods in pogroms, wars, and famines. The medium for her personal memorial is socialist-style monumental painting, which she has been using to comment on the war since its outbreak, reflecting not only trauma but also indignation. Lysovenko establishes a new relation to this traditional genre by using its canvases as a fabric to cover and uncover her body, unwrapping them into a banner of the kind found at demonstrations. This work is both a visual slogan and a temporary memorial. Its origins might be personal, but once unwrapped, its message concerns us all.
Kateryna Lysovenko (1989, Kyiv, Ukraine) is an artist who works mainly with drawing and painting, but also with performance. She has recently exhibited at the Memorial Museum “Territory of Terror,” Lviv; as well as at Gallery Voloshyn, Kyiv; Gallery Tiro al Blanco, Guadalajara (as part of the exhibition Transcending Boundaries, 2021); and Gallery BWA, Zielona Góra, where she was also an artist-in-residence in 2022.
1.7., 19:30
Intervention