Canada close by and far away

This is one of the projects held in Ukraine in 2017 to mark the 150th anniversary of Canada. The project’s multimedia installation is an “imaginary geography” of sorts, where time, identity, history, and abstract spiritual ideas are blurred, mgallery.kharkiv.ua reports.

The artworks’ author is Lesia Maruschak. The key element of the series is old spoilt photographs which the artist has refurbished. They look like phantoms of the past on the silken canvasses that can sway in the wind. Their almost semi-transparent black and white surface, shaded with ochre and cinnabar after years of neglect, determines the sad, dreamlike and subdued palette of the series.

The enormous never-ending vignettes show the icy Canadian prairies whose scale and distances are difficult to fathom. Big-size photos seem to be calling one to physically feel the scale of the Canadian prairies’ landscapes. The embodiment of destiny is the key idea of “KRAЇNA,” which runs through the whole series of Lesia’s works. Walking barefoot, as her ancestors used to do when they arrived in Canada, expresses a link with the Motherland – it is sort of a metaphor of memory.

The project “KRAЇNA: I Am the Earth” prompts one to remember his or her ethnic roots and not to lose their own identity, culture, and traditions in spite of globalization in contemporary society and the problems of immigration.

The Kharkiv exhibition will remain open until September 2. Then the project will be shown in Odesa, Lviv, and Kyiv.