Institut français Berlin
Kurfürstendamm 211
10719 Berlin
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limited wheelchair accessible WC
Elevators accessible to wheelchairs
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OPENING HOURS
Mon closedTue 9am–6pmWed 9am–6pmThu 9am–6pmFri 9am–5.30pmSat 11am–5pmSun closed

Closed Mon, Wed and Thu between 12–13 h, Tue between 13–14 h.

ADMISSION PRICE
Free admission
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Institut français Berlin
21.02.–31.03.2025
Opening
20.02.2025 6pm
The Transgressive Power of Grief
Lesha Berezovskiy, Mishka Bochkaryov, Igor Chekachkov, Oleg Dimov, Veronika Mol, Xenia Petrovska, Iva Sidash, Elena Subach, Oleksandra Zborovska

‘The hand of history

Turns over the hourglass

The page of the manual

The world upside-down

Peels the blue orange

It’s just that the shell is red’

Ella Yevtushenko, poem from the fifth day of the war.

On February 24, 2022, at 4 a.m., the first Russian bombs broke the night’s silence. she stitches together as a diary, so as not to dissolve in the wave of violence. When the hourglass indicates the worst, consequences emerge that impact the whole country. At the centre of this tragedy, young Ukrainian photography stages the fractures of the present day. A majority of women artists are represented in the exhibition, who lead us to encounter a new ecopoetics. Iva Sidash collects evidence from vulnerable zones. Oleksandra Zborovozka stages the intimate psychic trauma. Elena Subach follows a secret path of chairs that serve as resting places for refugees. Veronika Mol stitches daily Polaroids as a form of reparation. Xenia Petrovska invents the lava of a volcano that overpowers all life, unless it’s the scarlet juice of a blood orange that should be drunk as an antidote to the end of the world. These images create a subjective narrative of a war whose shadow hovers over each of us. They combine poetry with the urgent documentation of reality. Resistance and resilience are expressed in a collective chorus, and the ‘nezlamnist’ (unbreakability) of a nation is revealed.

An exhibition curated by Camille Leprince.

In cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute in Germany