Text by Maria Vtorushina
Sophia Bulgakova grew up in Odesa, a Ukrainian metropolis, port and cultural center on the Black Sea. Today, Odesa is repeatedly hit by Russian missile attacks: The port warehouses with grain are the main target. But the city center of Odesa, which is under UNESCO cultural protection, is also shelled, as are the residential buildings where civilians live.
Since leaving Ukraine in 2014, Sophia Bulgakova has been in contact with her childhood friends Di and Li via a Telegram group chat. “We all woke up today from some explosions,” is the first message Bulgakova received from her friends in this chat on February 24, 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in full force. This message serves as the title for her project, a conceptual diptych that manifests itself in an audiovisual installation and a publication. The audiovisual part of the installation “We all woke up today from some kind of explosions”, which was created in collaboration with Ymer Marinus, will be shown for the first time at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
While we are discussing with the artist how she wants to present the project at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, I wake up to the same explosions. But it is already March 21, 2024, between 4 and 6 a.m. Kiev is hit by rockets. My friends’ apartment is destroyed, they are evacuated; my mother, who lives near the block, doesn’t take any calls. And in the face of this horror, which is happening here and now and which is simultaneously reflected in Sophia Bulgakova’s project, the main task of the artist or writer is to look without turning away from the horror. Not to give in to the desire to escape from reality into an imaginary or poetic world.
Since the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, we have had no choice but to pay close attention to things that are so violent that no media can reproduce them.
The first act of seeing, of waking up and opening our eyes, is to endure the constant pain that comes from giving up the responsibility of being not just a witness but a participant in war, against our choice. For those who observe the wars through photo and video reports, everything we tell and show is just another shot among millions of images. As Susan Sontag said, “they have little impact, and there is something cynical about their dissemination”. But for us, waking up after the explosions, the testimony and the images also mean that we have to deal with the concrete work: where and how we protect our loved ones, where we get involved, who we support.
Although it is impossible to train the gaze to see everything that those who wake up after the explosions see, it is possible to imagine how the vicious circle of “looking at” the pain of others can be broken through radical compassion. A metaphor for such a restructuring of the observer’s gaze is one of the components of Sophia Bulgakova’s project. The artist’s publication contains stereograms that require the viewer to make a concrete effort to recognize the message:
1. hold the stereogram in front of you!
2. relax your eyes!
3. look through the picture!
4. wait for the words to come into focus!
Sophia Bulgakova is a Ukrainian art scholar, interdisciplinary artist and activist currently based in the Netherlands. Sophia works with art, technology and contemporary social structures, focusing on the relationship between cultural identities, perception and imagination. Through the different sensations in her installations and performances, she engages the viewer, influencing their way of perceiving reality and exploring new possibilities beyond reality. Sophia studied sculpture in Kiev and then obtained a foundation diploma in photography and time-based media at the University of the Arts London in the UK. She then completed the ArtScience Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of the Art and Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival (AT), CTM Festival (DE), Sonic Acts Festival (NL), Baltan Laboratories (NL), Mediamatic (NL) and Ningbo City Exhibition Hall (CN), among others.
Maria Vtorushina is a curator, researcher and writer. In 2023 Maria was the editor-in-chief of Artslooker Magazine; from 2016 to 2021 Maria was the artistic director of Kyiv Art Week. Maria holds an MA in Art Theory (National Academy of Fine Arts, Kyiv) and completed postgraduate studies at Maastricht University (FASoS). Maria is currently participating in the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.) Rave Scholarship Program at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.