Today marks the second-year-anniversary of russia’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In those two years, our world has changed drastically. We wake up every morning, have our coffee and read the news of bombs and missiles falling on cities in different parts of the world. We’re turning on the TV to watch debates, we’re looking at pictures of destroyed cities, culture, livelihoods and injured or dead people before we go on with our normal day-to-day-life. Some might argue we have grown accustomed to war. I’ve lost count on how many messages I’ve sent, checking if my friends are alive and okay – it’s easier to overlook the brutality and senselessness when living in a country not directly affected by war.
It’s convenient to block out the heartache of loss and forget there are people we’ve never met fighting for our freedom and peace, whose names we don’t even know and may never learn. But it doesn’t change the fact it’s happening. People in war zones don’t have that luxury; they cannot turn off the news for self-care and continue their days. They get woken up by sirens, explosions, and the fear, something might have happened to their loved ones. We need to continue talking about war, and we need to do our part in ending it – donating money and pressuring our governments.
In the last couple of months, I’ve been to western Ukraine twice. Both times, I visited the Jam Factory Art Center, which opened its doors for the first time late last year. And though one can tell themselves that life feels relatively normal in Lviv due to its geographical location, the sight of injured veterans or the daily air raid sirens take you back to the brutal reality. Life there isn’t normal. Instead of going to university, or starting your job, many young Ukrainians have had to take to arms to defend the most basic thing: their lives. In everyone you meet, the war and the unbearable question “why?” is ever-present and looms over you like a dark cloud.
As part of the trip, I went to the Jam Factory again to see the exhibition “Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us”. Luckily, Borys, one of the exhibition’s curators, was also in town that day and had the time to meet up for an interview. We spent two hours walking through the exhibition, which tries to capture Ukrainian history – past and present –, as well as identity. It demonstrates how important art is, even when your country is at war, as it somehow seems to manage to materialise the thoughts we struggle to organise, let alone vocalise.
Below, you can read an edited fraction of our conversation, as well as an excerpt of a letter written by Timur Dzhafarov, aka John Object, which he shared as part of the booklet as part of the release of “Plead”, which you can purchase here.
KALTBLUT: How did the collaboration among you, Kateryna and Natalia work out? This exhibition has such a vast theme; it’s not only about the war but also Ukrainian identity.
Borys: We’re still talking to each other, so I’d say you could call it successful. A part of this exhibition was about this collective creation. Since it was the first time we were all working together, it was a big question for us: How can we curate an exhibition of such scale during a time of war? Is it possible to even make a curatorial statement? We realised pretty quickly we couldn’t work in a classic way.
When you have some solid statements, and you would like to give them to the audience, the audience must be able to understand them. For us, it was not like this, more about walking around an exhibition about a lot of different practices and works. It’s not necessary to see everything; it’s more about the connections between works, practices, and how different participants can shape the story. Some artists told us that for them, it felt like small exhibitions inside a big one.
KALTBLUT: There are various formats in the exhibition: classic paintings, photos, and even videos on phones, to name a few. There’s an iPhone stuck to the wall playing videos of volunteers from the cafés “Kashtan” and “Lypa” in Kyiv who are rebuilding houses and preparing and delivering food to people in liberated places. Was that blend of classic pieces and non-traditional ones on purpose?
Note: As part of our 2023 “Fighters” – Issue, KALTBLUT spoke to Varya Lushchyk, who is part of the group rebuilding homes in de-occupied towns and villages. Read the interview with Varya here.
Borys: It’s not art in the conventional way, but for us, this exhibition is also about these temporary communities and activists. One of the questions we asked ourselves is what role art plays in a time of war. The participants of this group decided to be closer to the real struggles and effects of this war. Yaroslav Futymskyi, who filmed the videos, described it as a practice to take these areas back from the war himself.
Generally, when it comes to the medium, we were following artists. I heard a few comments about this iPhone, which is not considered artistic in the traditional way. When you’re a painter and at the start of the invasion, you have no paint, no canvas and your mindset is changing a lot, a new way of creating art could easily become your reality.
KALTBLUT: As a curator, how do you “detach” yourself from the emotions and things you’re curating? Is it even possible to see it as only a project?
Borys: For us, it was important to highlight that, as human beings living in a time of war, each of us identifies ourselves as a human – we are individuals caught within historical events from one perspective. This war is about more than just its historical scale; simultaneously, many of us are altering our relationships with friends and family. We forge new friendships or become involved in volunteering initiatives. Several artists in this exhibition are serving in the Army.
It’s as if there are two dimensions of the same moment – being a part of history and being with your closest friends simultaneously. This exhibition is akin to a poetic exploration of these dualities.
KALTBLUT: What I find interesting about this exhibition is the blend between history and modernity, as well as the deliberate choice to leave certain spaces blank due to the artwork not being here.
Borys: As part of the exhibition, there are photos from the Nova Generatsiia Magazine by the photographer Dan Sotnyk. These are not originals but a digital corpus printed again for us. It was also a part of this narrative that the medium couldn’t be exhibited, and this is due to the war. We decided to create these copies as a show of trust, or in this case, the magazine being in evacuation. “Evacuation” is a special term for artworks which are temporary not in a museum but somewhere in shelters. In case of VAPLITE #6 magazine with text by Mykola Khvyliovyi, for example, it’s an absent work, destroyed right after printing, and no one knows if it’s possible to find it.
KALTBLUT: Another big focus of the exhibition is resources. Can you tell me a little more about the salt lamp tank by Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev?
Borys: The title of the artwork is “Liking the wounds of war”. In 2014, when Bakhmut was occupied by the Kremlin-backed terrorists “DPR” but quickly liberated. These salt lamp tanks were sold as souvenirs for people to remember that Ukrainian tanks liberated the city. From 2016, every day, for several years, the artists licked the lamp and documented it.
It was almost a therapeutic practice. When they licked this tank, they filled themselves with a new life because they are originally from occupied territories and now, for many years, they live in Poland. The last pictures were shot maybe at the end of 2021 before the full-scale invasion. It’s a story marking the end of one period of war and this trauma. It’s conceptual art that has evolved into something more deep and disturbing at the same time.
KALTBLUT: The downstairs part of the exhibition feels a lot more emotional and intense, especially considering that it is also used as a shelter to hide from russian missiles and drone attacks. One of my favourite parts is the painted street signs designed to deter the aggressor from finding cities like Kyiv.
Borys: Some signs are back to normal, but some are still painted over. Among my friends, it’s still a topic of discussion whether it was a spontaneous idea that everyone decided to do, post it on Instagram, Facebook, and share it – or if it was more curated by the government. There is no answer.
It’s interesting because it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s stressful, especially in the first days of the war. These signs are around Kyiv, and one has to get up there, which means you’re completely out in the open.
To quote Susan Sontag from “Regarding the Pain of Others”, it feels that the buildings are almost as eloquent as bodies in the street.
KALTBLUT: That’s an interesting point. The photos right next to the signs are by the same photographer. What’s the story behind them?
Borys: Yes, Andriy Rachinskiy did a series on the typographic landscape of Kharkiv after rocket attacks. You can see a library, a supermarket, or a milk corporation, for example.
KALTBLUT: You’re from Kharkiv yourself. What do you feel when you see those photos?
Borys: I don’t have a direct answer, because of course, it’s traumatic. To quote Susan Sontag from “Regarding the Pain of Others”, it feels that the buildings are almost as eloquent as bodies in the street. It depends on the situation, but in this example, or perhaps in every work in this exhibition, I understand that every art piece, whether part of a series or not, is a very personal way to connect with this reality.
I believe this is true for every artist here. I’m not usually a person who cries, but when I listened to the piano part by John Object, it really touched me.
I experienced these emotions after the initial year of the invasion, noticing now that many texts, for instance, no longer evoke the same emotions. This aspect now resides in the past, and some of them are no longer effective. I am uncertain about the fate of these works. I believe that many of them will endure because they also possess a certain distance.
Similar to photography, where you do not capture every sight but make decisions about what to showcase, artists may revisit certain scenes multiple times, revealing numerous stories behind their artworks. Due to this, I believe these works will remain significant even after the war. Nevertheless, it is my belief that post-war times are distant, and perhaps it is appropriate to consider this exhibition as a kind of time capsule.
KALTBLUT: The photo of John Object by Sasha Maslov is one of my favourites in the exhibition, especially paired with his writings.
Borys: This photo holds significance as Maslov is now perceived as a war photographer; however, in reality, he is an artist dedicated to his practice. In Ukraine, he is widely recognised for his series “Railroad Ladies”, featuring railway ladies and his exploration of architectural forms within railway stations where women are employed. Consequently, we opted to select a specific work to establish connections between John Object’s and Sasha Maslov’s artistic practice.
Does an artist have to die to gain recognition?
KALTBLUT: As an artist in Ukraine right now, your work is always connected and attached to the war – if you want to, or not.
Borys: This also poses a significant ethical dilemma for many artists, as their visibility often stems from their practice becoming apparent rather than it being visible beforehand. A recent example is the tragic case of Maksym Kryvtsov, a poet who lost his life on the front line on January 7th.
His texts gained widespread popularity on platforms such as Facebook and in bookshops. This raises challenging questions about the distribution and visibility of art, as well as art criticism in Ukraine, given the prevalence of such stories where artists become visible in a manner akin to a mysterious tale about a deity – the artist must die before gaining recognition.
KALTBLUT: There’s another piece in the exhibition, which I think summarises the thoughts and emotions of many Ukrainians, are excerpts from the Instagram account @my_pet_spider. Since April 2022, artist and comic book writer Bohdana Zaiats has been posting anonymous wartime “secrets”. One of them, for example, says “February 24 death breathed in unison with me, she was next to me, touching me with her sticky fingers. I was just lucky.”
Borys: Yes, this is the wall of our suffering. This project is incredibly interesting, and for me, it’s one of the most poignant. The emotions it evokes when reading are quite intense. As a curator, it was my responsibility to go through everything. This is just a small section of Instagram, comprising over 1300 posts, and I chose to read it in stages.
The content revolves around themes of loneliness, the impossibility of close relationships, or conversely, a fervent desire to be with someone. It delves into the dehumanisation of the enemy, focusing on russian perspectives. Moreover, it explores heart-wrenching relationships with parents or grandparents on the other side, akin to an emotional wound.
The curated aspect specifically concentrates on personal relationships, such as love and friendships. However, the project as a whole extends beyond these personal aspects. It serves as a curated glimpse into a larger, comprehensive narrative.
I am still checking posts on Instagram, and there are numerous reactions to it. Some focus on this mirror effect where you read these texts, never discussing them publicly, yet recognising aspects of yourself and your thoughts within. I believe there is significant therapeutic potential in this communication, offering something valuable. It’s intriguing how this project has evolved into a parallel universe, with certain contributors choosing to respond to previous texts, leading to conflicts. However, it’s all part of a cohesive whole, and you remain uncertain about the identity of the person you are writing to.
KALTBLUT: There’s another part on the other side of the wall of the works we just talked about, which is about family. Lucy Ivanova has embroidered a vest by her late grandfather, who died before the full-scale invasion.
Borys: In the exhibition, several works touch on the Second World War and the myths that formed the basis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian propaganda worked to create new enemies by branding them as rivals on the battlefield of the 20th century: anyone who opposes Russia is a fascist. Lucy’s practice with embroidery on the vest is a kind of dialogue with a close person who stands on other positions regarding this uncertain heritage. This is both fear and thinking about the dialogue with grandfather, if it continued now.
KALTBLUT: That’s the devastating and incomprehensible reality many people with russian family members or friends have to live with. We touched on it earlier already, but you’re from Kharkiv, and you’ve moved to Kyiv and now spend your time between Kyiv, Lviv and Ivano Frankivsk. Do you feel like the further west you go in Ukraine, the more you enter a parallel world?
Borys: For me, it’s more about our genuine connection with war and understanding its nature. I’m uncertain about the current situation in Europe, as I have been outside of Ukraine four times in the past two years. In conversations with many people, there seems to be a perception of war as something abstract, involving constant shooting and such. However, when you are within a country that is essentially closed off, each attempt to leave becomes a bureaucratic adventure, increasingly difficult for both men and women in certain professions. I believe war is akin to a spectrum, a graduation of various situations, with the term ‘situation’ being particularly apt, as it varies depending on your location.
Different cities like Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, or Kherson offer diverse experiences, which are connected with a permanent threat to life. Lviv, for instance, is crucial for soldiers due to the abundance of hospitals. In my small talks with soldiers, it’s evident that war involves a continuous evolution of situations and decisions in response to new challenges, as well as the importance of a reliable rear and a full life in such cities as Lviv. Personally, I find the air raid alarms here in Lviv the scariest. It’s like a bold reminder that when you’re away from the direct impact of war, you still need to stay informed and be attentive to the ever-changing circumstances.
KALTBLUT: What are your plans now?
Borys: The genuine answer is that I am pleased to still be working in my field. The future is uncertain, and I can say that now in Ukraine, the danger of loss is acutely felt, the feeling that the support of the world has decreased, and we are counting on every life of our loved ones. We count how many of us there are. It feels like a dragged existential situation because there is always a decision to be made between one’s skills and abilities, which would be useful at this particular moment. International diplomacy, collecting donations to support the army and constant dialogue regarding the importance of weapons for Ukraine and danger that came from russian aggression are part of the affairs in which the artistic community is involved.
For now, I aim to complete some ongoing projects, like an exhibition of Pavlo Makov in Kharkiv and Tiberiy Szilvashi in Kyiv, including possibly a book about new works of contemporary Ukrainian artists, hopefully by the end of spring.
Follow @borysfilonenko on Instagram and check out the exhibition, which runs until 10th of March 2024, on the Jam Factory’s website.
When I left Lviv, I took the train to Przemyśl in Poland. The train was almost fully booked and as soon as I entered, we were surrounded by mainly women and elders and a couple of men. The journey to Przemyśl is short, but is prolonged due to the passport control at the border. We stood at the border for a couple of hours, watching as the guards pulled out men one by one, who then had to disembark the train. Late last year, President Zelenskyy announced the proposed mobilisation of another 500,000 soldiers.
As Borys said, this has made it increasingly harder for men and women of certain professions to leave the country and sooner or later, many of them know they will end up in the military sooner or later fighting for fundamentals of their existence. The beginning of the large-scale invasion saw a lot of people join the army. Normal day-to-day life became hollow and the purpose ever more clear. As already mentioned, I wanted to include a part of Timur Dzhafarov’s letter in the booklet for his latest release in this article. Before the full-scale invasion, he was known as “John Object” in the music industry. Now, he’s a soldier.
My name isn’t actually John, by the way, even though I’ve taught myself to respond to it, and I don’t correct people. I was born Timur Dzhafarov, and “John” was meant to be just another meta in-joke. Or maybe I didn’t particularly want to be a Ukrainian ten years ago. Seemed like the style at the time, to pretend you’re something else.
I wanted to be anonymous. I never really liked my face or appearance (I’m 5’7″‘), and throughout my life, I consistently felt a strong desire to be seen, and an equally powerful one to hide. I wanted to be seen as someone beautiful, but I felt so unattractive. I don’t think there were pictures of me on my social media until like 2016. I thought the need to exist as a physical body, a thing, for an artist, was a cruelty and a burden. What this half-hearted anonymity led to, however, is that the few pre-2020 pictures of me that are online, are really quite bland and unflattering, and the ones I posed for later, had really very little to do with “John Object”, at least, not in what the sound itself suggested. John Object isn’t me, by the way. It’s just a project or whatever. There were, and there will be others.
I am currently one of eight people in uniform sitting in a large khaki tent, it is 2 am, and the only light here is from about a dozen laptops and several large screens hung off the metal structural rails of the tent. I am relaying tasks to an artillery unit, six American howitzers, situated several dozen kilometres further away at the front lines, while a gorgeous, smeared and Al-like remix of EU/Youth & Kiss by Angelo Harmsworth is doing me absolutely no favours. […]
I made many mistakes in the John Object thing. My mental health struggles have been boring, only resulting in a very occasional Twitter meltdown, mostly lending themselves to bland motivational paralysis, cold coffee flavour to works in progress, and limpness of follow-through. I wish I actually was anonymous; I wish the music was better, I wish I’d bothered with mastering and stereo image, I wish I finished the Health EP or the album. I wish I wasn’t so all over the map. I’ve made hours of music, but only 14 minutes of it constitute Heat EP, my only “official release” (Sweat, while by all means superior, is a “live compilation” thing, so I don’t know if it counts). I wish I was a stable, healthy young man, and either tried harder or, maybe, didn’t try so very hard at all. Most of the details of my career fill me with despair about roads not taken. […]
So, regarding my career, I feel I could’ve done so much more and done it so much better. At least I didn’t chicken out and actually did play a mix of Bellwether when opening the first Ukrainian Boiler Room. That’s probably my single biggest contribution to Ukrainian arts. That got me some hate back then, and I don’t know if anyone ever considered it a worthwhile effort, but I wouldn’t change a thing. […]
The war killed thousands of us, both people just like me, and very different; every kind of person died — even the millionaires — as long as they were truly Ukrainian. Along with that, the John Object thing has been destroyed also: it will never be what I once hoped. There is now, forever on my profile, a blurry and smeared-front-camera video (a “Reel”, possibly) of my face, with a disastrous haircut, anxiously muttering about how russia has commenced organised bombings of most large Ukrainian cities, breached the borders, and that l am a Ukrainian, and this is real, and I suddenly may be dead tomorrow. And also that most of what you, listeners, have heard about Ukraine, is untrue. There will always be Instagram stories about blood and explosions, images of the dead, and me in my baggy uniform. There will forever be a chapter about how russians tried to kill all of us, instead of an album release cycle or a tour.
It’s still really hard to accept the fact that I never made a proper record. russians took even this from me: it was a really hard and edgy life, being a Ukrainian in 2021. I mean, we knew full well what was going to happen when 150K soldiers gathered at our border, we’ve known russians for centuries. They wanted to kill us then, and they want to kill us still. Reading the news, for a Ukrainian in the time before the full-scale war, would throw a solid wrench into whatever works you were trying to work that day. I do actually blame the absence of new music on russians. It was a scary, uncertain life, and, with the new EP getting nowhere, Sweat was all I could muster. […]
It is nice to have the luxury of having a cool Instagram profile. But I suppose the benefits of everyone who donated, and the massive effort, were worth sacrificing a superficial impression. Why does everything matter so much?
Thank you all for your donations, your posts, and your calls to your politicians. Your tweets, your speeches, and your thoughts. Your hearts, your ideas. Your weapons. We needed them and need them still. It’s not the time to move on, in fact, it is the time to give all you can. I know it sounds weird and greedy, but we literally just don’t want to die.
The strange thing here is that I receive only vague confirmations of artillery strikes. But then again, I do not miss the earth-shaking sound and the sight of another russian’s limbs flying off into the trees. If this is all I leave behind, well. I’ve made peace with it. This should be a nice addition.
I don’t think I’d be able to survive, mentally, 1.5 years of military service at war, with millions of living and breathing people, with jobs and families, intently wishing for my death for no reason at all, were it not for my longest unbroken therapy streak before the war. I literally had my last therapy session the week before the russians invaded. It was as if I was preparing for it all along. I’ll probably need therapy after this, but, to be honest, almost everything I’d worried about before the war now seems infinitely small. I actually feel pretty fucking cool. […]
I just don’t want to die. I just don’t. I’ve tried to accept it for 1.5 years, but I don’t want to. Or, rather, despite what I may have wanted at various points in life, I don’t want to be killed. Have you ever tried to survive in the knowledge that upon your death, many people would be glad to know it happened? How did this happen, what did I ever do to all the ordinary russians who sincerely believe I have the right to live? I just lived my life, I never knowingly hurt anyone. I haven’t been in a fight since 9th grade. I am, for all intents and purposes, a pacifist like you, dear reader. And I could give a shit about anything ever to do with fucking russia. The nauseating rot of a russian’s soul is staggeringly alien and irrelevant to any of my desires and feelings in life, and I never want to catch a whiff of anything russian ever again. Can’t a motherfucker live a life? […]
It’s not so simple. Ukraine shouldn’t just win the war, decimating the fascists, because their lives matter, also! War must be long and slow. Such both-side-ism is crucial for the russian campaign, and is, indeed, a widely used tactic of theirs. It is effective in making ordinary people reconsider their donations, and politicians reconsider or slow down, double- and triple-check their decisions.
Alright, I just saw a video of a Ukrainian soldier, horribly mutilated, on the ground, asking the combat medic to apply tourniquets to finish him off. To kill him. Not sure what to do now. I’m not really sure how suffering of such magnitude can be inflicted upon us by russians and witnessed by the world, for so long. I don’t know why, l don’t know why, so much suffering is clearly documented and witnessed, but grudgingly permitted. […]
It could’ve been me. The injuries of that man in the video were blurred, but he needed a tourniquet on his leg and another one on his arm, seemingly. I know I made a quiet promise to myself that I would never again consider dying: that I would survive at all cost, if not to live fully, at least as a fuck you to every russian. But seeing this, I no longer know if I could do it. I don’t mean to be grim. I understand that this is probably hard to read. And I’m almost feeling guilty, but why the fuck should I? My life has been like this for over 19 months, and I have no reason to hope it will get better anytime soon. We will keep fighting and giving everything we’ve got. Will the world keep watching idly?
I had a life.
I was here.
I did exist; I did.
You can read more of Timur’s writing on his website, or follow him on Instagram at @johnobject. His discography is available on Bandcamp.
If you want to donate some money to support the Ukrainians efforts to win the war, you can do so to the organisations, acivists and people below.
