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Berg Diana
My story exists between two voices: one longs to speak, the other trembles in silence. This work is my way of giving space to both.
Exactly a year ago, I spent a month in a closed rehabilitation facility for psychosis, after three days in intensive care. The conditions there were such that we ate with spoons instead of forks, and the windows were permanently sealed shut.
Experiences like this remain deeply stigmatized, and I feel a double vulnerability — both in speaking about it and in making this public coming-out through an artwork.
I kept a diary, a fragment of which I recorded for this piece. I feel a kind of pride in being brave enough to confess it, because what I went through does not make me less of a woman, less normal, or less human.
At the same time, I cannot fully allow my voice to be heard, because I feel shame. The stigma surrounding a person — especially a woman — in an extreme psychological state is still considered a social norm. And the color representing the normalization of neurodivergence happens, symbolically, to be my least favorite one.
— Am I a problem for you? — asks the last-year’s-me to who I am today.
— You’re not a problem for me! — I lie to her in response.
Diana was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, where she have lived till 2014. Just before the beginning of war and Russian occupation, she has become an activist and have initiated a pro-ukrainian movement “Donetsk is Ukraine” in spring 2014. After organizing thousands-of- people proukrainian rallies, that were constantly brutally attacked by pro-russians occupying the city, she had to flee from the occupied hometown persecuted by Russians. She settled in Mariupol later that year, an industrial town at the Azov sea only 20 km from the war frontline.
Diana has founded Platform Tu in Mariupol in 2016 – the centre of social changes and the promotion of human rights and freedoms through arts and culture. Being the only grassroots movement in eastern Ukraine that promotes underground culture, human rights and modern arts, through their initiatives she addressed the most acute social themes like gender inequality, discrimination, ultra-right radicalism, paternalism, refugees, totalitarian propaganda, and human rights and freedoms. Diana Berg was the head of Platform Tu space and Tu Art Group, being both the curator and the leader of the right defending work, for 6 years. The spaces were physically attacked several times for their progressive views and supporting human rights and freedoms.
In March 2022 with the full-scale invasion, she managed to survive the blockade and escape from Mariupol, occupied by russia, to relocate to Kyiv and transform the activities to the realities of war. After losing everything for the second time,and becoming forcefully displaced yet again, she adapted – volunteering, delivering humanitarian aid, evacuating people from occupation, fundraising for refugees, and saving museums on the frontline. More importantly, she coordinates projects on supporting Ukrainian refugee teenagers involving them to cultural practices, and promoting pro-Ukrainian narratives in EU with international cultural initiatives.
Since 2014, Diana was featured in multiple movies and documentary projects, for example the documentary by Resident Advisor “Ukraine: the Nightlife in Resistance” 2022-2023. Diana is also a conceptual artist focusing of the topics of home, displacement, and loss. As a performer, she uses interventions in public space to address the discrimination of women, LGBTQ+ people, and other acute topics. In 2019 Diana Berg was awarded with a medal for the merit to the people of Ukraine from the Ukrainian Parliament.