Unheritage - photo and video documentary project. Buy a print by Zoya Laktionova | Zoya Laktionova - documentary filmmaker, visual artist from Mariupol, Ukraine

Unheritage (ongoing)

Not enough to be a fully-fledged archive, but also not destroyed enough to be completely forgotten. Unheritage is the project of an artist from Mariupol, a city that was conquered and destroyed by Russia during the Russian-Ukrainian war. Using family archives that she retrieved from her home before the war broke out in full force, but are so old that they have already been damaged by time, the director uses these damages as symbols of remembering and forgetting and makes them the central theme of her work.

The work includes a video animation made from personal and found negatives from Russian-occupied territories of the Donetsk region (Ukraine). Film photos are a reenactment. Using stains from her family film taken from Mariupol, the artist destroys significant cultural objects of Vienna. The photo of the monument to Soviet soldiers, which stands in the center of Vienna, remains intact.

Exhibitions

2024 - DE/CODING TEXTILE, Künstlerhaus Vienna (Austria)

2024 - Solo exhibition Memory Practices, Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest (Romania)

2023 - Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (Austria)

DE/CODING TEXTILE, Künstlerhaus Vienna (Austria), 2024

Austria:

Romania:

Statement:

I spent three months in Vienna at the Academy of Contemporary Art working on a project. At the presentation of the project, the vice-rector called me and, while presenting the project and me, talked about the protests of Russians in Russia without making any light of the shelling in Ukraine. I was not given a word at the end. The presentation was not agreed with me.

My will is that words that support the Russians should not be spoken on behalf of me, on behalf of my works. Any dialogue will be possible only when Russia stops the war and Mariupol like other occupied cities and territories returns to Ukraine. I consider any attempt to place my name or my works on an equal footing with the Russian ones or in support of the Russians as manipulation and condemn it.

Russia is a terrorist state!