Woman - Berehynia

Opening 28 October at 17:00

Kostiurynskyi Provulok gallery, Kostiurynskyi Lane, Kharkiv

The present moment demands documenting from us as never before. The information space is saturated with photographs of our soldiers and of the war in general. This series of works by T.C. is a document of another kind — about those who not only wait, but do everything within a woman’s power to bring the boys home from the war. Until now an abstract word, berehynia has taken on entirely concrete names in our present. Today it is most often replaced by the word volunteer, but these women will enter history precisely as berehyni — guardians not only of a soldier’s life, but of Ukraine itself. Only please, come back alive. Come back — we are waiting for you, peaceful and impossibly beautiful: mothers, friends, grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters. Each of us is the whole of Ukraine. We will fill life again for you with living and embroidered flowers — the life you are winning back for us.

In these works the artist has brought together the pencil, as an instrument of strict documentary record, with contemporary colour media as a way of giving the portraits romance and decorative quality — and it is these that turn a particular woman into a general historical symbol.

Each of us has her own protectress: a mother, a grandmother, a well-known creative figure. A people has its protectresses too, to whom we turn in our minds for counsel from their work and their path through life. The heroines of my project are women who won their standing by word and deed, by selfless service to their people, and left their mark in art, in politics, in volunteer work — or simply in love for their one man. While our people has heroines like Lesia Ukrainka or Mariia Prymachenko — or, say, women like my friend’s mother, who gives her life to medicine — we are unconquerable, and our life will not stop.

Photos from opening