Exhibition “At a Distance”

Odesa Museum of West and East Art, Odesa | UA

March 24 – April 10, 2024

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From the curators:

In AT A DISTANCE, Sofiia Holubeva presents a deeply personal account of the full-scale invasion. Having lived between Ukraine and Germany for many months, distance has become a central theme in her artistic practice.

Though everyone experiences the recent years differently, Holubeva manages to evoke shared realities: strained contact with loved ones, forced displacement, the fragile value of familial bonds in times of uncertainty, and the changing landscape—both literal and emotional.

The exhibition is anchored in a recurring motif: the Arcadia beach of Holubeva’s childhood and youth. In the first room, it appears in a home video shot by the artist’s father in 1998. In the second, it re-emerges in paintings that document the landscape’s transformation in 2022. This visual dialogue captures the gap between memory and wartime, between what we remember and what remains.

A key element throughout the show is the physical and emotional distance between Holubeva and her family—an inseparable part of her identity and artistic language. Seeking to blur the line between art and everyday life, each work features participatory elements: the video was filmed by her father, her sister co-authored the Connection series, and many of the seashells used in the mosaic works were gathered by family members.

Themes of home, intimacy, familial ties, and wartime transformation are woven together into a single, multi-layered narrative.

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Graphic Design: Valentyn Panasiuk

Project Management: Oleksandra Stepova, Kateryna Holubeva

Text Editing: Anna Petrova

Communications: Yuliia Tsesarieva

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