Olena Turyanska. Agape. Absolute love

The language we employ to talk about war is induced to be the language of lack and existential chasms. At first, we were seeking to come up with the right words, but always felt there was a critical lack of them to describe the complex and immeasurable grief. As time passed, it seemed there were too many of them, all featureless and gaunt. We were looking for the words of love. The words to share the pain through. That is why we learn to discern the inexpressible in language, to speak with great attention to silence, and to intonate the emptiness where the meaning we pursue may emerge. We learn to capture crucial stories that are slipping out of future archives and museums into the light and through the gaps and voids.

In this exhibition, artist Olena Turyanska offers us a starting point for reflecting on a significant question that you inevitably come to during a war:

How do you avoid letting yourself disappear as a human being under the pressure of tragic circumstances?

The project grows out naturally from her earlier artistic practice and develops the subjects that are inherent to Turyanska: memory, the interrelationship of space and time, and the search for balance between the external and the internal. At the same time, it reveals a new experience from recent years, which we might call (co)experiencing History.

The artist establishes a coherent space where her memory, the memories of people she knows, and their ways of recording stories/history constitute a narrative. This narrative encompasses today’s condition of fear, fatigue, loss, trauma, and ultimately finding the strength to live on and not forget.

“It’s people who die, not love” is one of the project’s key messages.

It highlights that being integral is a valuable quality for history, tradition, and relationships while at the same time emphasizing the importance of individual and personal matters echoing in the universal and vice versa.

The concept of agápē, which gave the name to the exhibition, derives from the philosophical teachings of ancient Greeks. They used it to denote the supreme form of love — unconditional and all-encompassing, broader than interpersonal. Rather, it is a volitional love that does not arise through rational evaluation, but one that gives value to the other through care.

A particular ethos runs through this form of love and through the work of Olena Turyanska. It may be outlined through a culture of gift, subtle perception of everyone’s vulnerability and its protection, sensitivity to what’s vanishing, and devotion to dialogue. Therefore, in a certain sense, this exhibition takes the form of an “open monograph”. To shape it, the artist involves the authors who are meaningful to her. It is rather a conversation or a “text in progress” than a written chronicle of a person and society at war.

The project consists of artworks created mainly in 2023–2024. Turyanska has been embroidering, gluing, and cutting paper during and between air alarms, keeping her friends and acquaintances at and nearby the frontline in mind. For this reason, all the works carry deeply personal experiences.

Olena Turyanska. Agape. Absolute love. Curatorial Text  

Light and its dramaturgy are as significant to defining space and meaning as physical objects. Shadows are telling as they reveal subtexts that are not visible under direct light. The artist seems to balance between life and non-being all the time. She transforms the palpable, the living, and the tactile into signs, shadows, and scars. Then, she returns to reality through found objects that bear the evident marks of time. This artistic optics of “cycles” reflects the tenderness of affection and the acute feeling of the likelihood of losing what one loves. This feeling brings together all human beings and illuminates our shared desire to love more.

Turyanska began her artistic journey in the 1990s by painting icons on glass and became known for her reinterpretations of traditional Ukrainian paper-cutting. Therefore, she is well aware of the transparency, delicacy, and fragility of materials. For this project, in addition to conventional graphic materials, the artist also uses non-artistic, namely, construction ones such as fiberglass wallpaper, rubber paint, etc. Those originally belong to interior design, another specialty of hers. The durability of these materials contrasts with the instability of memory as a whole and all the distinct memories, while at the same time, they are literally linked to the concepts of “reconstruction” and “restoration”. Turyanska extends the life of everyday objects that keep the marks of corporeality and physical presence and turns them into “reified” poetry.

Formally, Turyanska’s artworks are abstractions of various degrees — a landscape losing details in motion and being reduced to geometric shapes, ballistic drawings-schemes, or imprints of the art studio worktops. The reality in this fluid state appears to come as what is deep within us: a dream, memory, recovery, return to life, or recollection. This personal reality dissolves in the flow of History, giving one strength to live through the war. At the same time, it is also the experience of building up one’s identity and personal history as part of a larger common History, where everything is interconnected.

You can visit the exhibition from October 24, 2024, to February 2, 2025.
Working hours: Wednesday-Sunday, from 12 PM to 7 PM (the Ticket Office is open until 6.30 PM).

❗ We care about everyone’s safety, so in case of an air raid alert, the exhibition will be closed. At this time, you can go to the nearest shelter. The exhibition will start working after the end of an air raid alert.