Installation. Stones from Crimea. Dimensions variable.
The south coast of Crimea has been the traditional place to spend their summer vacations for people from all over Ukraine. It would be a challenge to find someone who had never been in Crimea. Trips to Crimea had been a part of the traditional way of life for generations of Ukrainians.
The beaches of the south coast are covered with pebbles which people would often bring home as a souvenir from Crimea. A pebble was a document of summer vacations just as a picture in a swimsuit was.
A small physical object, a stone that easily fits in a palm becomes a carrier of memory about pleasure-from-place, a material proof of certain enjoyable events in the past.
Now, after the annexation of Crimea, these souvenirs obtain additional symbolic meaning and become a fragile link between acquired and lost, mental and physical, imaginary and eye-witnessed.
By gathering pebbles via personal requests, announcements, and social media posts, we have repeated the path of the Crimean tourist who gathers pebbles on the beach to re-create a common space of memories and a physical reconstruction of the place these memories are connected to.
A part of the curatorial project “Reconstruction of Memory” (by Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev).
Exhibitions:
2017 Reconstruction of Memory, DOX, Prague, Czech Republic
2016 Reconstruction of Memory, Jeżyckie Centrum Kultury, Poznań, Poland
2016 Reconstruction of Memory, Ukraiński Dom, Warszawa, Poland
2016 Reconstruction of Memory, Izolyatsia, Kyiv, Ukraine