A sudden movement of hope

The title of the exposition is “Homo/Animalis.” The author is Kateryna Yermolaieva, a 29-year-old artist who has moved to Kyiv from Donetsk.

The exhibit is organized in a simple and expressive way, according to the dual principle which lies in the title. In the first hall, trees and animals cut from paper are placed frontally to the entrance. All necessary details are drawn on white silhouettes with an engraver’s precision.

Animals in this forest, hares, foxes, and roes we know, behave in a strange manner. They are fighting, but not hares are fighting foxes or foxes – roes, but everyone is fighting inside of its species. Deer fight deer, foxes tear one another, and enraged hares get their teeth into their weaker brother. In the second hall, connected with the first one with a square arch, there is nothing but sheets of paper with printed text of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in official languages, French, English, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish, scattered on the floor.

Kateryna Yermolaieva is a street artist who is working in the wheat pasting genre, i.e., flypost her artwork, which is still rare in Ukraine; some of her works could be seen on the walls of the buildings near Maidan during the revolution. “Homo/Animalis” is her first solo exhibit, and beyond doubt it is successful.

The message here is very clearly read even beyond the Ukrainian context. The battle of animals which looks so strangely is what people do every day: they kill one another. In the second hall the audience has to trample down on the document which was written after a terrible war and defines the rules, which should prevent the wars, if everyone sticks to them. Because the coloristics of the exposition is well-thought off, the sheets of the Declaration repeat the white forest of the battle, the effect gets only stronger. “Homo/Animalis” is a bright and bitter metaphor of human aggression. The artist looks at the Homo sapiens species with despair.

Where is hope then? In the fact of existence of this installation, the fact that we can be terrified by what is happening to us, and there are always representatives of our species, who on the one hand, can show this horror in a very convincing manner, and, on the other hand, feel and understand this.

Kateryna YERMOLAIEVA:

“The idea of ‘Homo/Animalis’ originates from the notion of aggression. A human being in his aggressive manifestations always refers to his animal instincts. But this is the difference between animals and people. The aggression inside of the species of animals rarely ends with bloodshed, and never with killing. It is ritual, there are rules every animal is following. Everything is vice versa with people, everything is uncontrolled. The struggle for territory among humans, unlike animals, is always followed by victims. It gets to burned land. I wanted to show this with the help of the contrast. When someone justified himself by instincts, this is perceived normally. But if we show animals which really kill one another, this looks unnaturally.

“When I look at mass acts of violence, I understand that it is uncontrolled and global. In the current conflict in my homeland there is no sense in appealing to someone’s conscience or mind. The war made me understand that I can’t ignore this.

“I don’t believe in humanity. I hope only for concrete people.”