Vichna is a long-term, multimedia conceptual archive developed over four years through repeated travel to Ukraine. The project is housed digitally and is accompanied by an upcoming publication and a series of select printed works. It examines the resilience of Ukrainian cultural identity through practices of documentation, memory, and material inheritance.
Conceptually, Vichna operates through duality. It addresses the necessity of living fully, rather than merely surviving, in conditions shaped by violence and loss. The project therefore functions simultaneously in physical and symbolic registers. It documents cultural presence while also seeking to evoke forms of continuity that exceed the limits of the archival record.
The project is grounded in histories of cultural erasure in Ukraine. Across centuries, Ukrainian language, religion, art, and intellectual life have been systematically suppressed. Documents were destroyed, artistic production was interrupted, and cultural knowledge was targeted in order to sever relationships to origin, belief, and collective memory. In response to these conditions, practices of preservation became essential. The act of archiving emerged as a means of cultural survival and transmission.
Vichna positions the archive not as a neutral structure, but as an active and relational process. Many of the materials incorporated into the project were owned by my grandmother, whose role in transmitting Ukrainian traditions shaped multiple generations of her family. Through these inherited objects and images, personal memory is situated within a broader historical and cultural framework.
As a digital archive, Vichna remains open and accumulative, allowing the project to expand across time and geography. Its physical manifestations, including printed works and the forthcoming publication, translate archival material into embodied form. Together, these components assert cultural continuity in the face of historical and ongoing attempts at erasure.