іn collaboration with Piotr ARMIANOVSKI
Alexander KROLIKOWSKI, Anatol STEPANENKO
Olexii KOVALENKO, Mykhailo ZHURBA
Lyuba YAKIMCHUK, Vitaly CHERNETSKY, Dzvinka MATIYASH
Texty.org.ua (an independent media by Anatoliy BONDARENKO
and Roman KULCHYNSKY)

INVASIONS (360 degree film, text with illustrations, media research, found object, paper object, herbariums)
2021-2022

I call myself an artist. To a great extent my artistic attention is focused on the vegetable world. For me, this is also a study of the plants’ behavior, which differs depending on their origin. There are certain non-native plants that dominate native species and scientists call them invasive one. However, plants do not kill each other in an instant; nor do they escape in case of danger. This is why they seem to me incomprehensible beings against the background of the continuous history of human wars.
While the full-scale invasion that launched on February 24, 2022, Russian tanks came within five kilometers of my village, I wrote on my workshop door a message to the world: «Follow the example of plants: they are pacifists as far as it is possible on our planet».
In April, the Kyiv region was liberated from Russian troops and I was able to resume my artistic practice.
INVASIONS is my first big-scale work after February 2022, combining AR film, text with illustrations, media studies, objects and herbariums that I collected in Kansas in the USA and in Muzychi village in Ukraine. The desire to shoot on camera in 360° format arised from the understanding that Ukraine appears different in every centimeter of reality during the wartime: ruins on the right, children playing on the left…
INVASIONS is a film about the Russian-Ukrainian war, which began in 2014 and which because of the full-scale invasion of 2022 was called «invasion» in English. And it’s also a film about plant invasions.

Alevtina KAKHIDZE (1973). Feminist and media artist, gardener, curator. Author’s artworks appeal to the criticism of the culture of consumerism, the theme of gardening and plants, since 2014 depicting domestic life in occupied Ukrainian territories.
www.alevtinakakhidze.com