Under the threat of imprisonment, interrogation and the constant pressure of searches by Russian soldiers, six artists secretly met in a basement studio in the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson.
In the months after their homes were taken over by Putin’s forces, the artists formed a residency during which they created dozens of works, including drawings, paintings, videos, photographs, journal entries and plays.
The results, which they called Residence in Occupation, offer a harrowing insight into the horrors suffered by millions of Ukrainians living under the Russian invasion.
The images show dying hugs at train stations, families sheltering in basements – death looms behind them – burning houses and dancing figures, human skeletons underfoot.
When it became too dangerous to meet in person, the artists continued to work individually. Since then, some have fled the city, but others remain, risking their lives.
The group wants to exhibit their works, but doing so in Kherson, which has been occupied since February, is impossible. The residence’s curator, Yuliia Manukian, who is now in Odessa after fleeing Kherson, said art could act as a powerful act of resistance.
“I see how our artists tell the world the truth about war through the language of the arts. It is also important for me to convey how cultural resistance is given, which is no less powerful than the physical one, because the culture front is the place where a free future is being made,” he said.
“Much has already been written about the need for a clear sound of our independent voice in the international cultural and artistic arena, where for many years Russia dominated as the representative of Eastern European artistic practices. So it’s time to express this more than ever.”
Since 2002, Kherson has developed his own artistic movement, known as “kher-art”, which encompasses irony, sarcasm, audacity, and opposition to the mainstream.
During the first three weeks of occupation, Manukian said they were “in shock.” But after coming across the first works in response to the war from artists outside of Kherson, he began to see art as an imperative for “mental salvation” and brought together six local artists.
ZHUK, a well-known naive artist working under a pseudonym, had already started the work. the unwanted guest, a huge hornet painted in acrylic on an old tablecloth, to represent the destroyer and invader. And within hours of the atrocities in Bucha being revealed, he created a poster titled Putin Cock-a-doodle-doo.
An artist working in an occupied town near Kherson under the name of Marka Royal created an art diary titled Ms. Solodukha’s Z Notes. “The war crossed my whole life, but my little workshop caught my attention,” he wrote. “But how could you draw if you heard explosions? I thought: who am I kidding and why? You can’t pretend that the war is somewhere beyond. You have to document a number of your experiences on paper.”
His artistic documentation included sketches entitled Impossible to Stay/Leave 04/18/2022 Y Nine people in the basement 04/15/2022.
Yulia Danylevska avoids directly depicting the atrocities. Her works include images of runaway Mariupol residents scooping up snow to melt into water, a Russian soldier’s hand removing a gold earring from a Ukrainian woman’s ear, a severed hand holding a Russian flag, and in her photo dancing on bones from last month, redraws a screenshot from the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive.
Photographer Li Biletska, who is now in Kyiv, is working on a documentary, women In Occupation, and has created the photographic series Mary House, with portraits of women and girls living under occupation.
In a diary on Facebook, he said: “Since yesterday, a veil of smoke has fallen over Kherson. And it drags you down. But we hold on. We stubbornly try to live. We still have to plant a forest.”
A young artist and children’s book illustrator who works under the name Mona has created a series of paintings to reflect her inner state and a video art entitled … I want to scream. has dedicated his work Transition three generations of women killed by a Russian missile in Odessa in April.
Artur Sumarokov, playwright and film critic, created two works, The captivity (part one) Y The captivity (second part), after 45 days under Russian occupation. “What is it like to be under occupation?” he wrote. “It is to stop being afraid of death. Sometimes I’ve had the crazy idea that there might be something more honest about having you and your house razed to the ground than being held hostage by a polite sadist. And I started writing the play in this state of depression. Not because I wanted to. But only to save my mind from destruction.
