«Perspektyvna» is a spatial artwork consisting of paintings, stretchers, a mock-up model, projections, and sounds.

Commissioned by PinchukArtCentre, the work explores an artist’s place vis-à-vis the private and the political, the centre and the periphery.

Perspektyvna is the name of the street my workshop is located on. The building was constructed in the 1970s specifically for the Union of Artists of Ukraine members, including sculptors, painters, and graphic artists. Even now most of the artists working in it are isolated from actual cultural trends and adhere to conservative art views. Therefore, when staying at my workshop, I felt sheltered and distanced from political life.

In ​Perspektyvna, ​I analysed countless connections established between the place, my political subjectivity, and art practice, as well as between an artist and institution.

An army unit is stationed right under my workshop windows. I see young soldiers every day; I hear them march and sing. Perspektyvna street was recently renamed in honour of Ihor Branovytskyi, a hero of the counter-terrorist operation who defended the Donetsk airport and was captured, tortured, and killed. Therefore, my workshop was not only my shelter but also an epicentre of political events, constantly reminding me of the context that formed my identity as an artist. The front of the building housing the workshops overlooks Branovytskyi Street, named after a hero of contemporary Ukrainian history, whereas the building’s back overlooks the base with countless soldiers whose army experience is largely monotonous. I have transferred this correlation between the centre and the periphery onto my art practice and programmatic work with paintings. At the same time, I’ve organised the exposition space in order to avoid the binary opposition between the primary and the secondary, creating countless tension points while leaving the centre empty.

I depict the soldiers unknown to me on large canvases as I observe them from my window. Instead of creating a figurative painting, I focus on the surface on which tree branches and figures of soldiers form an indivisible unity. I commissioned exclusive stretchers from exotic sorts of wood for the paintings; the masters who created them gave each a name. For the artists, stretchers are secondary to paintings, whereas institutions invested in creating objects of contemporary art might see them as “an object from another era”. In my work for the PinchukArtCentre, a stretcher, endowed with a name and even a voice, has become a key feature with the subjectivity elements.

The sounds in my work were produced while the paintings were being carried out of the workshop, from my private space into the political zone. This transition is very important for me: in my opinion, it is what transforms creativity into art. The stairwell of the workshops building is paradoxically narrow, making working impossible for me as an artist who prefers large formats. 260 x 150 cm (100 x 60 in) is the largest canvas you can get down the stairs. I attached recorders to a stretcher and recorded an 8-channel soundtrack of a stretcher being brought down the stairs.