Pavlo Kovach
“I Am an Artist”, 2025, video performance, 20′5″
Pavlo serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. His duties include civil-military cooperation—working with the families of the fallen, the missing and those who have been taken prisoner. The video performance documents how, while serving in a military unit, Pavlo — dressed in his usual work attire, a military uniform — repeats the same phrase, “I am an artist,” one thousand times. With the constant, relentless repetition his voice weakens, sometimes cracks, sometimes he runs out of breath. This simple act of monotonous speaking conveys the internal tension, indeed the conflict, between the role and duties of a soldier and the identity of an artist. Pavlo utters the phrase as a tongue-twister rather than as a manifesto — as if addressing himself more than others. Through continual repetition the phrase gradually loses its original meaning as an affirmation and acquires the qualities of a symbolic act. The recorded specific “ritual of self-identification” shows that, in addition to the threat to the body, war creates circumstances in which one’s sense of identity—who we think we really are—is also undermined and endangered.
