PLANET OF UNLEARNED LESSONS

HOLDER OF ST.GEORGE CROSS

MEMORY IS ALIVE

LAST HUNTING

A creative duet of Ada Rybachuk and Vladimir Melnichenko has become a symbol of artistic underground for several generations of Kievites, however paradoxical it is to speak about underground with regard to sculptural architectural composition. I immediately recall the year of 1965, the project of a would-be monument to Babiy Yar victims (official name - "Monument to victims of fascism in Shevchenkovsky district of Kiev" since the word combination "Babiy Yar" evoked the authorities' steady allergy). The project "When the world collapses - Babiy Yar" by Ada and Vladimir was recognized the best by the expert commission to never be put to life.

When my friends recommended me to visit a collective exhibition of Kiev painters "Point of intersection - Sofia", I had no particular expectations. Firstly, formal techniques enrapture me no more, secondly, a professional psychologist and pedagogue, I have long desperately tried to find in modern canvases what would suit a child simultaneously in esthetic, spiritual and cognitive aspects. This is particularly characteristic of a Jewish child actively or passively introduced to the Jewish world outlook, to our tradition. But the exhibition in the very center of Kiev shocked me.

Primo Levi wrote in his memoirs about Auschwitz that the time came to study "the space that separated victims from their persecutors". This space, according to him, was home to "low and piteous people we should write about if we want to widen our knowledge about a human nature".