Olena Tsiluyko

The project touches on the theme of family memory.

Right after finishing school, my father went far from home to study, and his adult conscious life passed in a big city. He had the opportunity to return to his native village to visit his mother only occasionally. He independently learned how to photograph with a FED camera, develop film, and print photographs. In this way, he documented visits to the family in the village and our childhood with my sister.

I have many personal childhood memories of my grandmother and the village. Warm, unconscious, immaterial memories — existing on the level of sensations, but very important and poignant. It is these memories that now fill my art with particular details, nuances, rhythms, and associations. The continuity of this received experience extends into my works, and they indirectly become carriers of family memory, similar to my father’s photographs.

The multimedia project “Continuity” consists of four parts:

Collage “Unconscious”, which represents fragments of early childhood memories of summer at my grandmother’s village. Milky white, almost monochrome. Tactile, with folds in the fabric caused by the memory of textile fibers. With knots “for memory”. With seeds, like hidden embryos of plants; with a net containing a flower; with pockets holding hidden contents.

Assemblage “Evidence” — part of my father’s photo archive, photographic documentation of family memory, my father’s point of view.

Doll “Shtefka”

The doll is a generalized image of a rural woman of undefined age (49+), with a sun-tanned face along the contour of the headscarf and pale indentations of premature wrinkles. She is dressed in everyday clothing characteristic of the 1970s–1980s: a colorful cotton housecoat, a white headscarf with a small monochrome pattern, an apron, and slippers. She easily rides a Ukraina bicycle.

Animated film “Harvests”

Characters: Grandmother (the doll “Shtefka”), a Bean, a Beetroot, a Zucchini, and a Cauliflower.

The action takes place in summer in the village. The grandmother brings vegetables from the garden harvest and soon realizes that they behave like children. She accepts this fact and her life changes.

The fictional plot of the film is combined with authentic details of rural everyday life. Minimal dialogue reproduces the characteristic West Podillian dialect.