Tryvoha

"tryvoha" translates as [Anxiety] in English.

 

Artists: Vlada Ralko, Lesia Khomenko, Mykola Ridnyi, Oleksiy Sai, Nikita Kadan, Yevgenia Belorusets, Davyd Burliuk, Kostiantyn-Vadym Ihnatov, Oleh Holosiy.

 

Voloshyn Gallery is pleased to present a reconstruction of the exhibition “Tryvoha” – likely the first exhibition created during the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Curator: Nikita Kadan.

 

At the end of February and throughout March 2022, the gallery served as a bomb shelter for artists and their families. During the first weeks of March, Nikita Kadan began arranging artworks from the gallery’s storage around his mattress: works by Davyd Burliuk, Oleh Holosiy, Vlada Ralko, Kostiantyn-Vadym Ihnatov, Lesia Khomenko, Oleksiy Sai, Mykola Ridnyi, and his own. This resulted in an exhibition that took on the most obvious name — “tryvoha”.

 

At a time when "cultural life" gave way to the struggle for survival, the very concept of an exhibition and the practice of art display seemed to shed all of their established and conventional purposes and meanings: Why exhibit? What exactly? For whom?

 

“Tryvoha” was akin to a rebirth of the exhibition as such—an act stripped of external purpose or justification, a text freed from its context only to construct a new one from the raw material of an exposed, "non-artistic" reality. At the same time, works that were already part of Ukrainian art historical canon gained the possibility of being seen in a new light—at a moment of political rupture. Contemporary works, in turn, became direct testimonies of this rupture, capturing the moment when "becoming history" meant not an ascendance onto a pedestal but a finding of oneself at the epicenter of catastrophe.

 

This reconstruction does not seek to imitate the original exhibition of spring 2022 literally—it avoids transforming the urgent decisions of a turning point into mere stylization. Rather, it reflects on the distance between the beginning of the full-scale invasion and our present state, precariously balanced between the need for critical reflection and the urgency of immediate action in the midst of the fire.

 

Opening Reception: Friday, March 7, 2025 | 18:00 – 20:30
Exhibition Dates: March 7, 2025 – April 27, 2025
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday | 11:00 – 18:00
Location: 13 Tereshchenkivska St, Kyiv, 01001