Today, three years later, when many refugees have already settled into new homes, it becomes clear that the problems caused by the involuntary resettlement are not limited to material losses.
Reconstruction of Memory
DOX - Centre for Contemporary Art, Poupětova 1, Prague 7
October 22, 2017 - December 17, 2017
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Reconstruction of MemoryDOX - Centre for Contemporary Art, Poupětova 1, Prague 7October 22, 2017 - December 17, 2017
The Russian occupation of Crimea and the military invasion into Eastern Ukraine forced two million people (according to official statistics) to abandon their homes and flee in order to escape military actions and prosecution for their political views.
The occupation has not only forced us out of our homes; we also lost the continuity of our personal histories. While hurriedly packing documents and money, we left behind, scattered, our grandmother’s photo albums, our mother’s jewellery, and our first toys: all the trinkets that marked our progress in time. These are the things that no one would save. They are of no use for settling down in a new place. They would not make your new life better. For many years, we’ve been stockpiling those silent witnesses of our existence only to abandon them at a critical moment, thus depriving ourselves of material memories. The scale of this trauma is still being estimated. Cut off from our roots, deprived of the past, uncertain about the future, lacking support in the present, we will be unable to progress until this loss is apprehended, described, and analysed, and until the emptiness it has caused is filled once again.
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