Dana Kavelina. Just Landscape

Opening: 14.03.2025 20:00

03.04.2025 19:30
Language of Survival
Artist Talk: Dana Kavelina in conversation with Asia Bazdyrieva

Dana Kavelina’s exhibition presents her latest film that intertwines history and recurrence, as if time itself was caught in an endless rhyme. At the heart of the film is a Yiddish song about hunger that was written and sung during World War I in Poland. The song uses the metaphor of the wind as a force of destruction—blowing away rooftops, birds, crops, and trees, leaving behind a landscape of desolation. Reappearing during the Holocaust, it gained new significance as an expression of suffering and loss, an echo of a catastrophe unfolding again. In Just Landscape, the song operates as both an auditory and emotional anchor, resonating with themes of displacement, war, and survival.

The film’s opening text introduces another layer of coded language, drawn from anonymous messages posted on Telegram channels in Kyiv. These cryptic lines—such as “three green olives and one black olive near the metro”—function as warnings, alerting men to the presence of mobilization brigades. “Olives” symbolize draft officers in green uniforms, “black olives” refer to the police, and “clouds” signal patrols that sweep through the city. A message like “Rain washed away a few cars” signifies that several men were detained at that location. This clandestine language, designed to evade surveillance, blurs the boundary between poetry and survival tactics. These texts take on a double meaning—resisting easy interpretation while simultaneously revealing the mechanisms of war and control. The tension between opacity and reveling mirrors the film’s fragmented storytelling, inviting viewers to decipher its hidden messages or simply absorb its atmosphere of quiet urgency.

Curator: Mirela Baciak

Dana Kavelina (*1995, Melitopol, Ukraine) is an artist and filmmaker. She works with text, painting, graphics, video, and installation and produces animated films that explore personal and historical trauma, vulnerability, and perceptions of war outside mainstream narratives. Her works have been exhibited at the Kmytiv Museum; the Closer Art Center, Kyiv; and the Sakharov Center, Moscow. She has received awards at the Odesa International Film Festival and the KROK International Animated Film Festival.

Image: Dana Kavelina, Taki pejzaż (Such a Landscape), 2024, HD Video, 12 min, produced for Ex Oriente Ignis Pochen Biennale 2024 in co-production with Pinchuk Art Center (Kyiv / Ukraine).