TRACES ON THE EARTH  -   the solo exhibition in MORA Museum of International Art  -  August 9th  -  August 12th,  2024

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My previous exhibition, dedicated to refugees and immigration, was called “Looking at the Sky.” This is a very sad topic, related to the forced separation of a person and their children from their home and established life.

The next stage of exploring this topic makes me lower my eyes to the ground. I see the scars and marks of suffering and tears left by people when they left their homes. The earth keeps their traces; they do not disappear, they only layer upon each other, forming cultural strata.

But immigration was not the end of the world or the end of life, which cannot be said about the new wars where there were none just two years ago. There is an internal and external war, the killing of adults and children; anger fueled by lies is growing; a mass of people, under the influence of, let’s say, dark forces, justifies terrorism, demands the death of an entire people, demands that this people stop fighting for their existence; rivers of blood and tears are flowing. Phenomena like the Holocaust and genocide are looming on the horizon again. I fear that now anti-Semitism has greatly expanded its geography, and we cannot yet assess the consequences of its mutation.

The Tower of Babel is destroyed again, and people stop understanding each other. Such conditions create a favorable environment for the manifestation of the worst qualities of a person. In such a world, only individuals with certain types of mentality – dictator and slave – can survive. They kill our freedom, and it becomes harder for us to breathe, and we need a lot of strength to resist and fight.

In this project, I made blue the symbol of freedom. Here, BLUE is not a color in the artist’s palette, but a symbol of freedom and democracy. For example, the blue top of the Ukrainian flag, the Blue Star of Israel, the blue color of the Democrats in America – all of this is now in great danger. If we do not fight for blue, the life and freedom of many people will be in danger, as it happened in Russia.

Russia has lost its Blue. Only red blood remains, which it sheds inside and outside the country. Russia has now turned to the brown color – the color of fascism.

I want people viewing the exhibition to sharply realize that the world is changing rapidly. That freedom, security, and happiness will not come by themselves.

This is my alarm for democracy.