On 20 November 2026, Jam Factory Art Center in Lviv will open Light that shines through all the machines, the first solo exhibition of artist Dana Kavelina in Ukraine.
Spread across two floors of the Jam Factory Art Center, the exhibition features four films and an installation created specifically for the exhibition.
Curatorial team: Alex Fisher, Ksenia Malykh, Asia Tsisar
About exhibition
Light that shines through all the machines will be the first comprehensive survey of Dana Kavelina’s artistic practice. Featuring her earliest and most recent films, the exhibition at Jam Factory Art Center will allow visitors to trace the development of her artistic approach.
‘In one of Dana’s films, someone asks: “When should I look at the moon or read poetry if I must learn from history all the time?” While preparing her exhibition, this question has echoed in my head. Hearing it over and over, I have come to believe that this question speaks to what is at stake in her practice, giving voice to what she is searching for. Surveying the work that she has created thus far, I see an artist who is trying to satisfy what history demands of her without sacrificing her freedom to revel in what fills her with wonder,’ says Alex Fisher, co-curator of the exhibition.
In her work, Dana Kavelina explores how human and other beings come to understand, remember, and relate to history—and realize their (in)capacities to affect historical change. She addresses sensitive topics from a position of critical proximity, avoiding abstract, bird’s-eye views in favor of perspectives from the courtyard, street, living room, and field.
Screening these films side by side, the exhibition invites viewers to consider not only what their characters say and think, but also where, how, and when they do so.
‘Dana’s practice creates a rare space of safe empathy—a territory where traumatic experience does not re-inflict pain, but opens a doorway to compassion. Even when touching upon the most painful fractures of history or the present, she keeps the human being at the core: their vulnerability, fragility, and dignity. Immersing oneself in Dana’s world is a challenging yet healing journey toward the other, through which we reclaim the capacity to be more profoundly, more humanly present in this world,’ notes Ksenia Malykh, co-curator of the exhibition.
A separate part of the exhibition will feature a large-scale installation created by Dana Kavelina in collaboration with Anna Nykytiuk and Dania Lastivka specifically for Jam Factory Art Center. The installation presents what has gone into and inspired her projects while testing how these elements might gain new purpose—independently of what they were originally created for and, perhaps, independently of the artist.
Opening Programme — 20 November
18:00 — Opening of Light that shines through all the machines
19:00 — Conversation between artist Dana Kavelina and exhibition co-curator Ksenia Malykh
21:00 — Mizeria Party (29 Zhovkivska Street)
Admission to the exhibition is free on the opening day.
Opening hours and ticket prices
Exhibition schedule: 20 November 2026 – 22 January 2027
Opening hours: Mon – closed, Tue-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-20:00
Tickets can be purchased at the Art Center’s reception. Every Tuesday, entry is free for all visitors.
- Tickets: 200 UAH
- Half-price tickets for schoolchildren, students, internally displaced persons and senior citizens.
- Free entrance for children under 7 years old, people with disabilities, veterans, military personnel, students of the Academies of Arts, Trush College, and Lviv cultural studies departments.
The exhibition operates during power outages.
About Dana Kavelina
Dana Kavelina (born 1995 in Melitopol; lives in Lviv) primarily works with animation and video as well as installation, painting, and graphics. She graduated from the Graphics Department of the National Technical University of Ukraine.
In her character-driven practice, she explores how human and other beings come to understand, remember, and relate to history—and realize their (in)capacities to affect historical change. Her work The Lemberg Machine was the focus of a solo show at Galeria Labirynt in 2025. Her works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Jam Factory, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Jewish Museum Berlin.
Her works have also been featured in festivals and biennials, including the Kyiv Biennial, and Matter of Art. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, among others.
She has taught in Germany and presented on different stages in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Her writings have been published on multiple platforms. She won the Main Prize at the 7th edition of the PinchukArtCentre Prize and was shortlisted for the 2024 edition of the Future Generation Art Prize.
Stills from works featured in the exhibition
“I don’t work with the production of historical knowledge, of course. I work with the writing machines, the machines of historical narration, with narratives and imagery, and what I do is produce resemblance and difference, and a kind of strange solidarity between the victims of different epochs.”
“The truth of history for me is not about the facts, but about how we describe these facts, who writes these facts, who describes history.”
Dana Kavelina
Light that shines through all the machines is an exhibition of multiple firsts—Dana Kavelina’s first solo show in Ukraine, as well as the first survey of the Melitopol-born, Lviv-based artist’s practice. Spread across two floors of the Jam Factory Art Center, the exhibition features four films and an installation. Including her earliest and most recent films, the selected works trace the arc of her career. Together, they reveal an artist who is restlessly experimental, extraordinarily attentive to detail, and highly collaborative. They also reveal an artist who addresses sensitive topics from a critical proximity, avoiding abstract, bird’s-eye views in favor of perspectives from the courtyard, street, living room, and field. Screening these films side-by-side, the exhibition invites viewers to consider not only what their characters say and think, but also where, how, and when they do so. The same invitation extends to the installation. A new commission, the installation presents what has gone into and inspired her projects while testing how these elements might gain new purpose—independently of what they were originally created for and, perhaps, independently of the artist. Taking its cue from Kavelina, the exhibition is thus all about resemblance and difference. About the resemblance and difference between works. And about the resemblance and difference between what a work is, or was, and what it might become.
(Quotes from Kavelina’s presentation at The Collective Body Dismembered symposium in 2022)
Stills from works featured in the exhibition
