The metaphor of the incurable wound. We are left with the inability to comprehend this manmade tragedy.

Mechanics. The concrete landscape molds an inconspicuous canal, delivering water from the metal "plow." Metal corrodes by electrochemical action and "contaminates" the stream. The corrosion gravitates to the bottom with the flow of the stream, and the water cleanses.

The plow. The image of the totalitarian state machine, the reference to that times and grain production. In technical terms, the plow is made up of metal and concrete details. The plow and the streamflow directions come up against the concrete walls with the information on the Holodomor in Melitopol and Ukraine.

Visualization by ФОРМА

The Holodomor is a part of my family's history. My grandmother, according to her account, lived through the Famine in the area of Ural. She survived picking the food leftovers from the cracks in the wooden floor. Unfortunately, it did not save her brothers.

In my creative practice, I had worked with the subject of the Holodomor before; thus, I took part in the development of the Melitopol monument. I attempted to create an alternative to the existing memorials while revising the approach to historical memory.

I have familiarized myself with the testimonies, the excruciating memories running the blockade of our memory (our organism attempts to protect us from the tragic accounts). If we remember everything in detail, we will lose our minds.

The idea originates from the witnesses' stories about the street loading of dead bodies. If a mother or a father died leaving a small child, the latter was thrown alive on the wagon among the corpses and buried in the mass grave, covered with the earth. The child was moving for several days because of organic processes or the last physical efforts.

Instead of displaying a particular "visual" image, I chose to create a "state," which differs for every spectator. The architects from the Replus bureau and I considered it crucial to develop peaceful comfort zones (the benches, the lightning, the greenery) where one would like to spend their time — idyll. The one "but" lies in the gradual movement of the well-trimmed and groomed lawn. The spectator does not notice it immediately. Only later on, they detect this inconspicuous, uncanny movement. It is not a conventional "monument," it is a situation where the spectator is embodied in the memory.

I do not list the instances of the "images" this monument will generate. Here I would like to give a space for the spectator. It implies the same immersion effect as in the works of Oskar and Zofia Hansen. The presence of the passage is a reference to their practices.

The passage through the hill. While walking through it, we will be able to notice the movement of the ground at eye level. As the aperture is shaped like an arc, we cannot see the way out, we have to move on. The mass of the carved "route" became a barrier between the private and the public spaces — the area of the monument. Symbolically, we distance ourselves from the living to "listen" to the dead. On the other hand, it is the so-called shortcut, or the "desire path." We can often see paths between the paved routes. When a person is in a hurry, they shorten the way and become a part of the monument running into it.

The static part of the monument will be made in the technique of rammed earth (compressed earth with concrete). The wall production technology requires ramming earth mixed with a small amount of concrete layer by layer into the formwork. Something similar occurs during the natural process when everything transforms into a chornozem. To my mind, in symbolical and visual terms, this technology suits the subject. The ground will be lifted with the large tires, inflated and deflated by the compressor under the thickness of the soil.


The artist — Pavlo Kovach

The architects — Replus bureau

Animation — Ivan Oleksiak