Comings and goings of citizens in five public sites around Kharkiv are filmed from a static angle. Without a sense of context, the uneventful footage seems irreconcilable with the brutally violent conflict between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian activists that occurred here only months earlier. Rupturing the calm atmosphere, audio excerpts extracted from online videos have been overlaid on top of the footage; shouts of threats, warnings, abuse and intimidation echo across indifferent scenes, in a forced confrontation between recent traumatic memories and a present state of collective denial.

This programme A Letter From the Front was originally commissioned and produced by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin, after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is curated by Nikita Kadan with Giulia Colletti.