2018
In conjunction with Full Scale, Ukrainian painter Lesia Khomenko's first solo exhibition in the U.S., Fridman Gallery presents a conversation between Khomenko and experimental filmmaker Dana Kavelina, preceded by the U.S. premiere of Kavelina's Why There Are No Monuments to Monuments. Kavelina's earlier work, Letter to a Turtle Dove, is currently on view at MoMA in Signals, a groundbreaking exhibition on the history of video art.
(Left): Lesia Khomenko, Unidentified Figure 5, 2022, acrylic on canvas
(Right): Dana Kavelina, Why There Are No Monuments to Monuments (2021), 35'
Lesia Khomenko is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist. In her works she deconstructs narrative image and transforms paintings into objects, installations, performances, and videos. Khomenko’s interests lie in comparing history and myths and revealing tools of visual manipulation. She graduated in 2004 from National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv. She completed residencies at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv (2005-2007) and LIA (Leipzig International Art; 2008) in Leipzig, Germany. She is a co-founder of HUDRADA, a curatorial union and self-educational community based in interdisciplinary cooperation.
Dana Kavelina works primarily with animation and video, as well as installation, painting, and graphics. Her works often address military violence and war, seen from gender perspective – especially with regard to the position of a victim as a political subject – as well as the distance between historical and individual trauma, and memory and misrepresentation.