A space where we, like plants,
like seeds,
like clay,
where we “once again return
to what we used to do.”
How do you remember the gardens of your childhood? Or a garden you planted yourself? In our memory they are always in bloom, filled with fruits and berries—the sweetest ones, unlike any others found anywhere else. It seems that those trees and grasses support us across the years: embracing us with their branches, caressing us with their leaves and blades, holding us firmly with their roots.
As a result of the Russian invasion and ongoing hostilities, many of our lands in occupied, de-occupied, and frontline territories remain mined, abandoned, and inaccessible due to danger. Thousands of people forced to leave their homes since 2014 have found ways to cope with loss, in part by “recreating” their home in new places: through gardening that repeats fragments of the past, or through cooking and sharing food as performative acts that return them to earlier times through scents and flavors. Family recipes, seasonal holidays, local dishes—all of these help to reveal the cultural heritage and memory of Ukraine’s regions and national communities.
Working together with three Ukrainian artists—Diana Khalilova, Lilia Petrova, and Iryna Loskot—the participants of “The Land We Carry” rediscovered their relationship with gardening, observing plants, and memory through drawing, movement, storytelling, working with clay, and cooking. The space of such co-creation made it possible to reveal the rich artistic images that lived in our small community’s memory of home and homeland. Something long forgotten would resurface, and what once seemed “unimportant” became meaningful.
It is difficult to imagine celebrating in times of daily tragedies and losses. Yet gathering around a table is not only about light-hearted joy; it is also about mutual support, about grounding oneself in community, about the possibility of “being together.” In the project, we held communal kitchen sessions, where speaking and listening about the difficult and the intimate was just as important as cooking and eating. That is why the table we invite you to at the exhibition is made up of personal stories—happy, painful, diverse, yet ultimately relatable.
We created this exhibition with its visitors in mind, striving to make the space as open to interaction as possible. What matters most here is the time and place for experience—to remember, to feel, to slow down, to observe. We present our practices and approaches to working with individual memory, and we invite you to share your own stories, to be attentive to yourself and to others.
Artists:
Diana Khalilova
Lilia Petrova
Ira Loskot
Participants:
Anastasiia Sierikova, Andrii Holdaiev, Anna Koshel, Anna Kurnatska, Halyna Vorona, Hanna Varshavska, Daniela Hrytsak, Diana Horban, Yarysia Makiievska, Karina Dovhan, Mariia Krykun, Nadiia Noskova, Olha Kamisarova, Olha Kis, Olha Niesterkova, Sofiia Hrynevych, Yuliia Dudnieva, Yurii Pryima, Yaroslava Katsedan.
Special Thanks:
Lerane Khanum Kurtnebi Kizi
Bohdan Ostapchuk