Kyiv Diary 2014

Curator: This piece really pulls at something inside me... a whisper of unease, wouldn't you say? Editor: Indeed. We are looking at Vlada Ralko's "Kyiv Diary," created in 2014, a drawing rendered in watercolor on paper. What immediately strikes me is the use of the human form as a vessel for social commentary, but I’m curious about your unease… could you elaborate? Curator: It's the stark vulnerability contrasted with… well, a kind of muffled rage? The way the figure is presented, almost like a discarded doll or a mannequin, yet bearing marks like crude stitches running down the torso. It feels incredibly intimate and disturbing at once. Like peeking into a trauma dream. Editor: Ralko made this as part of an ongoing visual journal chronicling the political upheaval in Ukraine. Knowing this, the image takes on deeper layers of meaning. The stitched body, for example, speaks to the fragmentation and pain inflicted upon the nation. Curator: Yes! It’s that rawness, that unfiltered expression of… I don’t know, helplessness, maybe? And the facelessness—or rather, the masked face. As if individual identity is being erased in the face of something larger, something overwhelming. A true portrait of national despair. Editor: I agree. The masked figure, reminiscent of protest attire or even wartime camouflage, certainly underscores the suppression of individual voices during times of conflict. Consider the title, too, "Kyiv Diary." Diaries are intensely personal accounts. The piece presents a powerful intersection of the political and the deeply personal, of collective suffering and individual experience. It also invokes critical questions about how gender and sexuality intersect with experiences of war and violence, specifically the female body displayed through an overtly male-dominated and political lens. Curator: Thinking about it, perhaps unease is not the right word… perhaps, it's empathy. That is, if you're willing to meet this drawing on a feeling level, and you’re in touch with all those associations this can trigger about both historical events, as well as intimate life experience. Editor: A powerful testament to the artist’s role in documenting and processing collective trauma. I find it impossible to not pause and feel gratitude for artistic responses such as these. They speak louder than any historical document.