SVITLOKOLA
2020 – 2023
Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars
Walt Whitman
SVITLOKOLA is Olia Mykhailiuk exhibition which is comprised of elderberry drawings on large format tracing paper, light art pieces created from tracing paper and photos of the Carpathian landscapes where these berries had been found.
The first pieces for this exhibition were created in 2020-2021 in the Carpathians during the residency in Khata-maysternya-space (Ivano-Frankivsk region) and continued with the exhibition “Drops” and “Say: Light”
SVITLOKOLA was planned for the spring of 2022, but didn’t take place due to the full-scale invasion. The artworks remained under the glass roof of a Kyiv studio in a building where soldiers were stationed. Their author switched from artistic practices to volunteer ones. When the building was returned to civilian use, the pieces could again be taken.
At the end of 2023, the exhibition was held in Ivano-Frankivsk (Vagabundo), Kyiv (Ukrainian House National Center), Odesa (America House Odesa).
SVITLOKOLA also includes three video works of 2020 and 2023.
07_07 (2020) audiovisual piece is created in co-authorship with SK.EIN. He works with sounds recorded on the Sokilsky Ridge, and Olia Mykhailiuk experiments by combining videos of Carpathian fogs and careful movements of tracing paper.
The Orb (2020) is a light art piece created in co-authorship with Sasha Moskovchuk, an installation in the Carpathian space, documentation.
Babyn-Bakhmut (2023). In the spring of 2023 our first return to the mountains happened after a long break. The plan was to take photos and videos of familiar landscapes. But it’s not only about landscapes: people live there. And some of them are fighting in the East or the South protecting our elderberries and trees. It was Easter. At the village council, villagers loaded gifts for their loved ones at the frontline. This was how Olia Mykhailiuk got to know local volunteers who were going to Bakhmut and recorded some first interviews with the sound of bells, sellotape and Carpathian streams. On the next trip, they went together with volunteers and polish sound artist Tomasz Sikora. New interviews with military personnel from the Frankivsk region were recorded near Bakhmut and Huliajpole. They are about love for the Carpathians.
Documentary stories are so intense today that it was hard for me to imagine returning to abstract works. But I found myself in the Carpathians and felt the same hidden light and fog. I tried to enter into a dialogue with the pieces created before the full-scale invasion. And yes, I managed to get into my “elderberry portal” again which leads to a space of peace and tranquility
Olia Mykhailiuk
Funded by the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut.