Nikolay Karabinovych

Ici et ailleurs

15 July–5 August 2023

On Solidarity
Films in Times of War
April - September 2023
Kunst im Traklhaus showroom

On Solidarity is a curated film programme that explores films by Ukrainian artists in times of war and violence.

15 July - 05 August 2023
Nikolay Karabinovych, Ici et ailleurs (2023), 8:16 min.

Produced with support from Pinchukartcentre. Courtesy of the Artist and EIB Art Collection

This new artwork by Nikolay Karabinovych is the final chapter of the trilogy that the artist has been presenting in Kyiv over the last four years. The first part, The Voice of Thin Silence, told a story about his grandfather who was deported to Kazakhstan in 1949. In the second one, entitled Even Further, Karabinovych was researching his own Greek and Jewish roots, reflecting on the historical tension between these peoples, which now have their respective diasporas co-existing in modern-day Odesa. In the third and final chapter, he dives into experiences having to do with yet another ordeal faced by a member of his family, this time the artist's mother.

While consistently sharing personal, familial stories, he chooses to present them in a very minimalist and concise way, sparing the details and thus allowing the viewer to better relate to the plot.
In this retelling of a small personal tragedy, the artist implies millions of similar ones destined to pass unnoticed due to their assumed insignificance as compared to atrocities of war. He emphasises the tension between the presence and absence that many Ukrainians in exile experience nowadays.

In the video, the artist's mother plays Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, Timpani and Strings on an imaginary organ.

No music is heard and no audience is seen on the screen; she is surrounded by silence and solitude of a desolate desert.