_just_went_away
Performance
Kyiv region, November 2014 — performance
Gallery Gedok (Munich), December 2014 — performance
Brodskyi Art Museum (Berdyansk), October 2015 — performance
DOX Center for Contemporary Art, part of the exhibition “Reconstruction of Memory”, Prague, 2017 – video documentation of the project
Memory and Tolerance Museum, Mexico, 2019, part of the exhibition “On the Frontline” — audio-visual installation
UCEC Oseredok, Winnipeg, Canada, 2020, part of the exhibition “On the Frontline” — audio-visual installation
There was no connection for a whole week. Finally, I managed to call my friend.
— Bomb shelling started today, — he said, — Right on the next street. People packed up and left.
— Where did they go? — I asked.
— I don’t know, just went away, — he answered.
Stay and wait? Leave, not even knowing where to go? At that moment, rational explanations do not exist. At that moment, your body makes the decision, and you move behind it intuitively.
A month before this talk, my friend and I were in the occupied city of Alchevsk (40 kilometers from Luhansk) which, until today, was not controlled by Ukraine. The same day that I had to travel to Kyiv, the railroad exploded. Everyone at the station was forced to stay in the city for an indefinite period of time. There were many women — pregnant or with babies — who had walked 40 kilometers that day, from Luhansk, a city that had already been under fire. I managed to leave after two weeks, but I kept thinking about those who stayed at the station. After the news of the next shelling, I also decided to simply go — 40 kilometers in an indefinite direction
Olia Mykhailiuk
I kept thinking about those unknown women from the station, where the trains did not leave. Who stayed there? Who left? Where to? At what time? I met many women over a year in Berdiansk (100 kilometers from the front line), a city that accepted many displaced people from the occupied territories. I went away for them because they had not been able to
Olia Mykhailiuk
A performance that has combined documentation of the 40 km hike and texts written with chalk and coal on various surfaces.
I met the girls “for whom I walked”, whose stories sounded inside me. After they saw documentation of the previous performance, they believed in me and agreed to participate. I recorded the stories of internally-displaced women with a special focus on the moment when they decided to leave their homes
Olia Mykhailiuk
All of her characters were single mothers who had moved away from shelling in the summer of 2014. The voices of the internally-displaced women added to the length of the 40-kilometers. Protagonists were invited to participate — now it was not only Olia with a pen in her hand.
_just_went_away was demonstrated as part of the exhibition “Reconstruction of Memory”.