The exhibition “KRAÏNA: I Am the Land” is an expression of respect for Canada, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. It is one of the projects being held in Ukraine throughout 2017 to celebrate this date.
The project’s multimedia installation is a kind of “imagined geography,” where time, identity, history, and abstract spiritual concepts are blurred.
Lesia Maruschak considers her relationship with the land to be the meaning of her life. The central elements of her series of works are the instability of human existence and photographs that provoke the viewer’s interest. A key element of the series is old damaged photographs that were reworked and renewed by Lesia. Like ghosts of the past, they are presented on silk canvases that can sway in the wind in the exhibition space. Their almost translucent black-and-white presence, tinged with ochre and cinnabar through years of neglect, defines the sad, dreamy, and muted palette of the series.
Vast and continuous vignettes of the icy Canadian prairies — a place where scale and distance are difficult to comprehend. Large-format photographs seem to call us into their space and invite us to physically experience the scale of the Canadian prairie landscapes. The Chornopolissia embodiment of fate is the key idea of KRAÏNA, which permeates Lesia’s entire series of works. Walking barefoot — as her ancestors did when they arrived in Canada — is like a connection with mother, Homeland, and native land; it is a kind of metaphor for memory.
The project “KRAÏNA: I Am the Land” encourages us not to forget our ethnic roots and not to lose our own identity, culture, and traditions despite the globalization processes of contemporary society and issues of immigration.
In addition to Kharkiv, the exhibition project “KRAÏNA: I Am the Land” will also be presented in Odesa, Lviv, and Kyiv.2