Yarema Malashchuk & Roman Khimei
Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei have been working as filmmakers and visual artists since 2013. Their works address post-historical and post-imperialist regimes of power and their impact on current social structures, focusing on a new generation of Ukrainian people confronted with a bleak outlook on the immediate future. Scenarios of societal change and the implications of war loom over a plethora of everyday challenges and the complexities of life. Ever since Ukraine’s independence following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, its fight for freedom has revolved around maintaining the country’s
identity, language, and territory within defined borders. Malashchuk and Khimei’s multi-channel video installations refer to a past and present that are fragmented, leading to moments where the perception of reality would seem to split. For Ukraine, the splitting of territory has been an issue ever since Dnieper Ukraine was made part of the Soviet Union after the Russian revolution of 1917, with western areas of the country then being annexed by military force in 1939. A similar event occurred in 2014 with Russia’s annexation of Crimea through a so-called “Treaty of Accession,” after which 2022 saw Russia’s war of aggression shift into high gear. Malashchuk and Khimei’s works draw on a dark past in order to understand a harsh present where young people have to face the traumata of history while living in fear that they will never be free. These relationships are analyzed by the artist duo in a visually poetic way that includes numerous close-ups and various narrative strands. Viewing reality and viewing art might be like looking at two sides of the same coin, where one entails the other—or, as Susan Sontag put it concerning images of war in general: “Creating a perch for a particular conflict in the consciousness of viewers exposed to dramas from everywhere requires the daily diffusion and rediffusion of snippets of footage about the conflict.”¹ Malashchuk and Khimei create snippets of an artistic reality by way of their own visual language, denoting temporary shockwaves in the face of loss. Their artistic practice analyzes coming of age in a conflict-ridden territory using a simplistic visual rhetoric oriented on specific moments of depiction in art history and concepts of pictorial representation. W.S.
1.Susan Sontag. “Regarding the Pain of Others.” New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, p. 21.
moreArtist duo, founded 2013, Kyiv / UA