Resilience: The Heart of Ukraine – Photography by Michael Andrews
August 4 – September 9, 2023
Kokol Gallery
Reception:
August 4, 2023
Kokol Gallery
5PM – 7PM
The photo exhibition, “Resilience: The Heart of Ukraine” features work by American photographer Michael Andrews. As a volunteer with United States Peace Corps Ukraine in 2018–19, Andrews augmented his service as a consultant to an HIV and AIDS service agency working as a photographer for Ukraine’s Baba Yelka Cultural Expedition. The group was formed in 2018 to preserve and share the unique cultural traditions of Ukraine’s Kirovoghad region — stories, songs, recipes, and material culture, including traditional embroidery.
“Resilience” offers a unique window into remote village life before Russia’s invasion, and focuses on the lives of Ukrainian “babusyas” (grandmothers) and their cultural roots.
The exhibition was a year in the making and required long-distance collaboration between Andrews and his Ukrainian colleagues. “Resilience” debuted in Charlotte, NC in 2022, and presently is on tour to a number of American venues. The exhibition invites discussion of a range of timely topics, including the iconic role of grandmothers in Ukrainian culture, the country’s history, unique traditions, and today’s war.
“Resilience: The Heart of Ukraine” is a tribute to the babusyas and families who preserve Ukraine’s unique and beautiful culture and to the Baba Yelka Expedition’s race against time and unthinkable war to preserve Ukraine’s unique traditions for future generations to embrace.
About the Baba Yelka Cultural Expedition
The Baba Yelka Expedition is named for Olena Rybalkina, nicknamed “Yelka,” who lived in the village of Rossohuvatka, Malovyskiv district, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine. Yelka was the grandmother of Svitlana Bulanova, a founder of the cultural project. Baba Yelka knew hundreds of folk songs, treated local villagers with herbs, raised ten children, and survived the Holodomor.
Realizing the knowledge that their ancestors possessed was disappearing, the expedition’s founders decided to tour the entire Kirovohrad Oblast in search of authentic folk songs and artifacts that are unique cultural markers of the Kirovohrad region and which are not well known to the world. These are the culinary traditions of great-grandmothers, patterns on old towels and shirts, ornaments on chests, and relics. “Baba Yelka” is also interested in preserving memories of the Holodomor, collectivization, testimonies about beliefs, witchcraft, wedding traditions, and more.
Since 2018, the project has visited 80 villages, recorded more than 800 ancient songs, captured 200 recipes, and talked to hundreds of respondents. They produced a cookbook of traditional recipes in 2021 and today have their own traditional clothing line and operate an ethnolaboratory in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine.
Inna Tilnova-Danylchenko and Svitlana Bulanova, founders of the Baba Yelka Cultural Expedition, with babusya Nastya Pavlivna Zelenko (born in 1939) in Rozumivka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Katerina Zayarnyuk (born in 1942) selects lunch tomatoes from her closet in Bovtyshkа.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Halyna Holynsʹka (born in 1939) near her house in Rozumivka village.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
105 year-old Baba Olga Grigorivna Kharkovets and her daughter Eugenia Shust at their shared home in Vinogradivka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Maria Kalechkina (born in 1931), former regent of the local orthodox church, at her home in Zlynka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Director of the village club Lyubov Kharchenko at her parent’s home in Glodosy.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Lyubov Kharchenko greets the Baba Yelka Cultural Expedition at her parents’ home in Glodosy.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Anna Markivna Kolomiets (born in 1940) at home in the village of Krymky with an apple pie she just baked.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Lyubov Melnik and Olga Piven, singers of the folk group “Red Viburnum”, present fresh-baked vertuta bread for lunch after their performance in Lypnyazhka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Lyubov Chebotar (born in 1953) and Iryna Sklyarenko (born in 1940) welcomes the Baba Yelka team in Katerynivka with a traditional lunch of vareniki along with team photographer Оleksandr Maiorov and driver Hryhoriy Kurysh.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Nastya Pavlivna Zelenko (born in 1939) enjoys lunch in the House of Culture in Rozumivka where her folk group “Barvinok” has performed.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Lyubov Kharchenko at her parent’s home in Glodosy.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Tatiana Gekalo (born in 1927) at home in Pavlivka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Oksana Mykolenko (born 1934) shows her mother’s khustka (shawl) in her house in Moshoryno.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Mariya Yevdokymivna Kovbasa (born in 1926) at her daughter’s house in Nerubaika.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Mariya Makhynya (born in 1937) at her house in Bovtyshka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Anna Markivna Kolomiyetsʹ (born in 1940) of Krymky shows a rushnyk embroidered by her mother.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Participants of the folk group “Red Viburnum,” led by Vira Ivinivna Ogreba (second from left, born in 1942), perform during the expedition in Lypnyazhka. Vira’s husband, Vasylʹ, plays the accordion.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
The women of the Monotheistic Svyato-Pokrovsʹkyy (Holy Transfiguration) Church in Zlynka (the oldest parish in Ukraine) sing the service in ancient “hook notation,” a Byzantine chant.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Tetyana Gekalo (born in 1927), at home in Pavlivka sings a folk song and plays her balalaika.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
A member of the folk group “Kalina” in Dolinskа works out the dance move before their performance at the village hall.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Nastya Pavlivna Zelenko (born in 1939) walks to her front door in Rozumivka after a visit of the Baba Yelka team.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Halyna Holynsʹka in her house in Rozumivka watches as the girls from the Baba Yelka team climb on the pich (traditional stove).
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Marusia Hrygorivna Vasilchenko at home in the village of Pervomayske, shows off her 100- year-old loom.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Kateryna Kondratenko (born in 1953) shares photos from her family archive during the Baba Yelka team’s visit to Krymky.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
A Babusya in prayer at the Monotheistic Svyato-Pokrovsʹkyy (Holy Transfiguration) Church in Zlynka.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Yevheniya Krolevetsʹ (born in 1932) in her house in the village of Glodosy.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Olena Chukhriy of Glodosy, whose husband Volodomyr, as a boy in 1961, found a seventh century cache of gold buried in a beet field. Today the “Glodosy Hoard” is in a Kyiv museum.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
Baba Polina Hryhorivna Dymchenko (born in 1935 р.н.) has a happy moment with Natalia Mikhailovska in Nechaivka after the Baba Yelka team recorded Polina singing “Wormwood, Wormwood”. Singer Svitlana Bulanova transformed this song into a modern one and recorded a music video.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
A babuysa walks in a field in Lypnyazhka, an ancient village (first millennium BCE). Once home to the third largest sugar beet factory in the Republic, the factory was demolished in 2004. The housing block for 1,000 workers is now abandoned.
20×20 Digital photograph printed with UV cured ink on birch panel in 2022.
