Danylo Pavliy
‘Weight of the Body’ series, 2025, digital photography, print on metal plates, 10 x 9 x 7 cm
Danyl’s method is based on close observation of reality and minimal interference in it through a laconic artistic gesture that highlights what is inapparent. The impulse for the series ‘Weight of the Body’ came from a typical message issued by the Centre for Demining, which Ukrainian citizens have often received since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Sent to Danylo and millions of his compatriots on 5 November 2023 at 1:45 p.m., the message contained a set of instructions on how to act when ‘coming across a suspicious object’. Danylo records banal objects found by chance—a sodden matchbox, a piece of paper with notes, a lost plastic arm of someone’s doll—which in ordinary life usually attract no attention. Yet in wartime, the everyday and the banal lose their unambiguous meaning, become suspicious or expose the terrifying absurdity and surrealism of that condition.
