Yehor Antsyhin – My Broken Bones

From the very beginning of his artistic work, Yehor Antsyhin has been concerned with themes of memory, trauma, and landscape. The latter finds a special place in the artist’s practice, thus standing for him as a reference point and a medium of meaning.

Exhibition opening: 06/04/2023 (Thursday) at 7:00 p.m.
Where: Galeria Labirynt 2, ul. Grodzka 3, Lublin
Accessibility: The exhibition is held in a space not accessible for people with motor impairments.
Opening interpreted into Ukrainian; interpreter: Volodomyr Dyshlevuk. No English interpretation.
Exhibition on display: until 07/05/2023 (Tuesday–Sunday, 3:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.)
Admission: free

Curator: Magdalena Linkowska
Coordinator: Diana Kołczewska

For Antsyhin, the landscape is a partner, and people are in a constant, and intense yet not always conscious relationship with it. The landscape appears as a primarily emotional phenomenon; it’s born in relation to whoever dwells in it, looks at it, listens to it, or gives it meaning. The artist carefully and persistently investigates our relationship with the physical surroundings in an attempt to answer questions about our individual and group identities, as well as our relationships in a world of specific values. Antsyhin’s latest project, entitled “My Broken Bones”, repeats, in the context of the war in Ukraine, the question of what violence does to people and the environment, and how time and experience affect our perception and understanding of the world. (Magdalena Linkowska)

This project raises the issue of the trauma that Ukrainians receive every day since the beginning of the invasion, whether on the battlefield or at their homes. It will be known only after some time – the depth of these traces that each Ukrainian has received each in his own way. Loss of loved ones, native home, evacuation – this list can be very long. Using the image of a healed bone, Yehor Antsyhin reveals the problem of the traumatic memory that changes over time. Physical or mental “breaks” make people more resilient, cooperated and strong, but self-awareness of trauma comes after some time. The artist has already started working on these issues, discussing them in the public space and looking for ways to rehabilitate and prolong the actualization among the European community of this important issue. The consequences of catastrophe of the active phase of the military invasion that has taken place on the territory of Ukraine for more than a year already should be highlighted. (Yehor Antsyhin)

Yehor Antsyhin – born on July 16, 1989, in the Yuvileine village, Dnipropetrovsk region. He graduated from Dnipro Theatre and Art College in 2009 and the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 2015. From 2013 to 2015, he attended contemporary art course led by K. Badyanova and L. Nakonechna. He was a member of the Specific Dates art group (KKD) in 2015–2018, Montage art group in 2016–2020, and a scholarship holder of the Gaude Polonia programme in 2020. Antsyhin works with memory and discoveries within it through the conflict of personal and official history, social criticism, labour relations.

For the last 5 years, he has been actively involved in land art. It affected his view and perception of the landscape to some extend and helped him to open a new method of interaction with space, the rejection of object-subject relations with the environment and the inclusion of space not as a part but as a participant in the interaction in his works also actualising the topics of ecology and overproduction. But the golden thread of his artistic practice remains the theme of memory, recollection and oblivion.

Antsyhin uses the following media: installation, photography, painting, participatory and performative practices, archives, land art. He lives and works in Kyiv.

The picture based on:

Sixth rib from the posterior and inner aspect
Date: 1887
Source: Fig. 18, p.37, Dixon’s Manual of human osteology (1912)
Author: Andrew Francis Dixon (1868-1936)