Volodymyr Kuznetsov
‘Buckwheat Groats with Meat’, 2025, documentary audio play with subtitles, from the series ‘From the Anthology of Ukrainian Cuisine 2022–2024…’, 46’55”,created in collaboration with the composer Maryana Klochko and the Ukraine War Archive
Volodymyr explores themes that combine the private and the public, treats memory as a form of experience and creates new concepts based on both personal and collective knowledge. The artist employs a wide range of media—documentation, drawing, painting, embroidery, video and performance. He focuses on the aesthetics of everyday practices as well as on the presence of the archaic within the contemporary. For the past two years, Volodymyr has been documenting the work of volunteers in Kyiv Oblast and working with materials from the War Archive.
‘Buckwheat Groats with Meat’ is a documentary audio play with subtitles, telling the story of the phenomenon of Ukrainian volunteerism in dark times. It forms part of the series ‘From the Anthology of Ukrainian Cuisine 2022–2024’—a documentation of wartime experiences that serves both as a political archive of the present and an archive of gestures of solidarity and public acts of social engagement. The film is based on testimonies collected in collaboration with the War Archive and the artist’s documentary recordings of rescuing people by delivering food in the first days of the invasion.
The collected fragments of stories, dialogues and interactions at first glance concern the everyday and seemingly banal process of cooking—routine work without pay or days off. Yet Volodymyr’s video functions as a lens through which specific traits of Ukrainian society are revealed and expressed. It is thanks to these traits that the country has been able to resist a much stronger enemy for four years already. The protagonists of the film—people of different ages, genders, social backgrounds, professions and beliefs—would probably never have met in peacetime. Yet they found themselves ‘in the same kitchen’ by choice, driven by a shared sense of solidarity, empathy and ultimately love. Their interactions and conversations—routine, lively, sometimes naïve but profoundly sincere—reveal extraordinary dignity and humanity underpinning their decisions and actions. Volodymyr’s film highlights the finest qualities of Ukrainian society brought to life by the full-scale war. On the one hand, they set Ukrainians apart as a community; on the other hand, they affirm their commitment to European values and imbue them with new meaning.
