іn collaboration with Piotr ARMIANOVSKI, Alexander KROLIKOWSKI, Anatol STEPANENKO,
Texty.org.ua (an independent media by Anatoliy BONDARENKO and Roman KULCHYNSKY),
Olexii KOVALENKO, Mykhailo ZHURBA, Lyuba YAKIMCHUK, Vitaly CHERNETSKY, Dzvinka MATIYASH
I call myself an artist. To a great extent my artistic attention is focused on the vegetable world. For me, this is also a study of the plants’ behavior, which differs depending on their origin. There are certain non-native plants that dominate native species and scientists call them invasive one. However, plants do not kill each other in an instant; nor do they escape in case of danger. This is why they seem to me incomprehensible beings against the background of the continuous history of human wars.
While the full-scale invasion that launched on February 24, 2022, Russian tanks came within five kilometers of my village, I wrote on my workshop door a message to the world: «Follow the example of plants: they are pacifists as far as it is possible on our planet».
In April, the Kyiv region was liberated from Russian troops and I was able to resume my artistic practice.
INVASIONS is my first big-scale work after February 2022, combining AR film, text with illustrations, media studies, objects and herbariums that I collected in Kansas in the USA and in Muzychi village in Ukraine. The desire to shoot on camera in 360° format arised from the understanding that Ukraine appears different in every centimeter of reality during the wartime: ruins on the right, children playing on the left…
INVASIONS is a film about the Russian-Ukrainian war, which began in 2014 and which because of the full-scale invasion of 2022 was called «invasion» in English. And it’s also a film about plant invasions.