Off-Road

Photography, objects, video, 2022

Project exclusively created for the solo exhibition in Kunsthalle Graz, Austria in 2022. Curated by Nastia Khlestova and Anton Tkachenko. Photography assistance – Zhenia Laptiy.

…My name is Olia Fedorova. I am a multidisciplinary artist, who was born, lived and worked in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Before the full-scale war started in my country I used to work mostly with the landscapes, viewing them as semantic spaces. I used to intervene them gently with my own body or some temporary objects, observing how new meanings and connotations are formed in them depending on my actions and their interpretation by the viewer. These interventions I documented by means of photography and video. The second focus of my practice was the text and performative writing. Using this media as an instrument for meditation and a certain self-therapy, I aimed to talk with the viewer about very personal, often hidden, silenced things.

On 24th of February, when Russia launched its full-scale aggression against Ukraine and started non-stop bombing of Kharkiv (which is, unluckily, located only 40 km from the Ukrainian-Russian border), my family, friends, neighbours, also my two cats and I hid in the shelter located in the basement of our house. Starting from the Day 1, sitting in this underground bunker, I started writing short diaries-like texts and posting to my social media about everything we were going through. Thanks to my friends and all those networks that I managed to build during my artistic career, my word was spread and my voice was heard.

I was pretty sure that I was going to stay in Kharkiv until the very end of the war, that I was going to meet the victory at home. Most of my friends have left by that time, I was excited thinking how I would meet them in Kharkiv when they come back. But I guess my powers and mental resources just came to their logical end - it is too hard even for the strongest ones (whom I wasn’t at all) to keep fighting with the same rage for so long. I decided to use my opportunity and
leave – just to keep sane and not make it to a complete breakdown. In the end of May I left Ukraine and arrived in Graz.

Now I’ve been living here for more than 3 months already. Getting used to the feeling of safety that I have almost forgot, healing and trying to restore my inner resources, regaining the sense of a normal life. But still everything around reminds me of my home country. I look at the peaceful sky above Graz and I can’t help thinking that somewhere out there, above Ukraine, above my Kharkiv, the same sky is filled with danger, fire and smoke and whistle of the missiles. I look at the Austrian landscapes and I can’t help thinking that Ukrainian landscapes with which I used to work so many times as an artist – some of them look very similar to the local ones – are now burned, bombed, mined or torn apart with the wheels and tank tracks. And that I won’t be able to bring there any other connotation, as the only one these landscapes have now is about the war. But actually I can’t even know when I’ll be able to see those landscapes again. The only connection with them that are left for me now is my memories.

These memories I am revising in my «Off-Road» project at Kunsthalle Graz, through the artworks I’ve done in the environments of my home country in the times when they haven’t been yet affected by the war. Through the memories I want to keep my connection with the Ukrainian landscapes alive, but at the same time – to reflect on the new circumstances, on this very feeling that life will never be the same for me and for every Ukrainian. And also – to research my current state of being a temporary displaced person, that millions of Ukrainians share today as well.

«Off-road» is where I used to do my performances in Ukraine – it is a very word to describe all those unnamed fields and woods which I was intruding and then leaving with no trace behind. «Off-road» is a metaphor of uncertainty - the dominating feeling for those who are in exile – but at the same time it is about countless possibilities and destinations. It is about «nowhere», but also – about «wherever». It is so scary to be «off-road» – because you don’t know what it may bring to you, don’t know the direction in which you’re going and where (or if) you will come at the end. And actually, compared to the «road», «off-road» doesn’t have any end – because it is an everlasting path. Not a dot in a sentence – but three dots, meaning that nothing is over.

«I don't know where I am. Where do I go among the infinity of destinations?

I don't know how I got here. Did I leave home to enter the road? Or am I on the road in search of home?

I don't know what is going to happen to me. Will I be going, or will I come somewhere, or fall dead. I hold my flag tightly in my hands.

I know nothing. Except that when I get tired of going I will stop and rise my flag above the horizon, above the sky and ground. I will know then that now these are my sky and my ground, and it is my home, because I brought it with me. 

And wherever I go I will carry it with me. The flag will fly, along with the infinity of destinations.

I still won't know where I am. But I will always be home.»

I wrote these lines in 2019 when I installed my transparent flag over the horizon for the first time. In this project, named «I don’t know where I am, but it is my home», I traveled to unnamed, deserted places and set up a flag with a transparent canvas. This flag didn’t carry any images - no colors, no coats of arms, no slogans. It took on its surface the landscape, the very environment in which it had been installed – everything beyond reflected on the canvas. It aimed to challenge the very idea of carrying a flag as an act of proclamation of one’s own identity, its separation, a certain opposition to the world – and also of the installation of a flag as a gesture of  conquest, colonization, marking of space, application for possession. The flag with a transparent canvas loses this symbolism, but instead acquires a new one – about openness to the world, readiness to perceive and accept – not for survival, but for understanding and productive coexistence.

Since then it became one of the main symbols in my whole practice, it came through many exhibitions and gained new and new meanings along with ever changing circumstances and with ever changing myself.

This flag I brought with me to Austria when I ran away from the war in Ukraine. Now I’m installing it in its landscapes. But this time I’m one with my flag – my bones and my muscles, my skin, my guts, my heart and soul. It is home that I have always with me, inside me.

This particular flag has a very special meaning. It is a twin flag of the one that I installed in Mariupol and left as a gift to my friends there 2 years ago. They were cut from the same large piece of cloth. And I truly feel this spiritual connection, through this transparent canvas and it’s memory, with Mariupol, Kharkiv and with all those landscapes – skies, horizons, waters, endless spaces of dug soil, wheat fields and valleys covered with snow – that I left in Ukraine and that are waiting for me there. And meanwhile I will carry them with me, always, wherever this off-road brings me.

This project had a name «Off-road Signs» and I started it in winter of the year 2021.

The signs I used were manufactured at the factory according to the standards of real road signs.
I traveled with them to the secluded natural areas not far from my home town in Ukraine and installed among the empty landscapes, to emphasise the void around, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to make the environment gain a new meaning. The signs were installed for a short period of time and then removed without leaving a trace.

In total 6 signs were produced: «End», «Nothing», «Земля» («Earth»), «Вас вітає Батьківщина» («Welcome to the Motherland»), «Come Back Soon». The sign with three dots on it was the last one and was meant to close the series. I planned to install it in some Ukrainian landscape – like all the previous road signs – but I didn’t have time to go to the location, and then the full-scale war started. It was stored for months in my mother’s car and then in my apartment in Kharkiv. My grandpa took it from there and sent it to Graz.

So the sign with three dots, symbolising that my journey is not yet finished – and basically is only about to start – symbolising the very idea of the «off-road», became the first artwork I made in Austria. Also it is my first work in the landscape since November 2021. I never cease to be amazed at this amazing coincidence – as well as all the other incredible coincidences that happened on my way and eventually brought me here.