Resilience: The Heart of Ukraine – Photography by Michael Andrews
August 4 – September 9, 2023
Kokol Gallery
Reception:
August 4, 2023
Kokol Gallery
5PM – 7PM
Today, people in Ukraine talk about their lives before February 24, 2022. They insist that their lives were forever cleaved into “before” and “after,” the invasion of their sovereign nation. Despite propaganda to the contrary, Ukraine’s unique traditions reach back thousands of years, forged by other invaders and many rich cultural influences that have fused to create modern Ukraine. The incredible cultural abundance forged “before” can still be witnessed today in remote villages as enduring remnants of Ukraine.
In 2018 and 2019, I was an organizational development specialist for Peace Corps Response, a little-known division of that US government agency that enlists technical experts for high-impact assignments. I was posted in Ukraine to be a business coach for the young executive director of a large HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment agency. Early in my engagement, I was invited to share my photography skills with a fledging, all-Ukrainian project called the Baba Yelka Cultural Expedition. Our team traveled to remote villages in the Kirovograd (central) Ukrainian region to document and preserve unique stories, songs, recipes, and material culture, including hand-made and embroidered textiles.
The young founders of Baba Yelka know they are racing against time to document the traditions of villagers, mostly aging grandmothers, who endured many struggles of agrarian life: Stalin’s starvation campaign, Holodomor, in 1933, Nazi occupation, the strife imposed by meager Soviet-era pensions and many others. In spite of their difficult lives, the grandmothers I met had light in their eyes as they recounted funny stories with laughs or shared anguished memories
with tears. They were eager to share their beautiful lives with the world and I captured thousands of those moments with my camera.
Myriad such stories honor the vagaries of rural life. “Before” is celebrated in Ukraine’s remote villages with stories and songs shared with bountiful food and drink, investigations of old photograph albums, discoveries inside handmade trunks full of textiles, and revelations of other traditional artifacts. Before war brought international attention to the politics of the nation, Ukraine could be defined by her unique traditions. Now, with cities smoldering and millions of people displaced, preserving the country’s rich heritage is even more crucial. The Baba Yelka Project races to save Ukraine’s cultural heritage for future generations.
The photographs in this exhibition depict remnants of imperishable traditions – many moments frozen in time before 2022’s invasion that reveal Ukraine’s distinct and worthy culture. There is much to learn and discuss about the lives of people in these images. Elementally, the photographs depict incredible resilience, hope, and perseverance – qualities durable in the past and essential for future prosperity, for Ukraine, and for us all.
Lypnyazhka
A babuysa walks in a field in Lypnyazhka, an ancient village (first millennium BCE) with a distinguished craft tradition. Once home to the third largest sugar beet factory in the Soviet Republic, the factory was demolished in 2004 and the housing block for 1,000 workers, abandoned.
20″ X 20″ digital photograph printed with UV-cured, environmentally conscious ink on 9mm birch board.
Mounted on metal standout frame with French cleat.
Zlynka
The women of the Monotheistic Holy Transfiguration Church (the oldest parish in Ukraine, since 1798) in Zlynka. They are singing in “hook notation,” which is considered the oldest chant and was used in Byzantine times.
20″ X 20″ digital photograph printed with UV-cured, environmentally conscious ink on 9mm birch board.
Mounted on metal standout frame with French cleat.
Nechaivka
Babusya, Polina Hryhorivna Dymchenko, born in 1935, holding her kitten, dances with Наталія Михайловська at her cottage in Nechaivka. Polina has just recorded the traditional song, “Wormwood, Wormwood,” for researchers, which was transformed into a modern song by the Yelka Band in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine.
20″ X 20″ digital photograph printed with UV-cured, environmentally conscious ink on 9mm birch board.
Mounted on metal standout frame with French cleat.
Krymky
Anna Markivna Kolomiets, born in 1940 at home in the village of Krymky with an apple pie she just baked.
20″ X 20″ digital photograph printed with UV-cured, environmentally conscious ink on 9mm birch board.
Mounted on metal standout frame with French cleat.
Pervomayske
Marusia Hrygorivna Vasilchenko at home in the village of Pervomayske, shows off her 100-year-old loom.
20″ X 20″ digital photograph printed with UV-cured, environmentally conscious ink on 9mm birch board.
Mounted on metal standout frame with French cleat.