OLEXANDRA HOROBETS – I AM AFRAID TO DRAW MY MOTHER

The rooms on the first floor of the Museo Novecento host the video installation Ho paura di disegnare mia madre by the young artist Oleksandra Horobets (Starokostianteniv, Ukraine, 1997), a project curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli.

The work is based on a short 16 mm documentary filmed in 1984 in an orphanage in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which the artist found by chance in January 2022. Horobets intervenes on the original footage of the film by adding animated drawings and portions of stories that draw on childhood memories, modifying the sound by almost completely removing the audio and preserving only the Ukrainian spoken word.

Ho paura di disegnare mia madre (I’m afraid to draw my mother ) is a work on memory and on the complex process the mind puts into action in re-elaborating memories, mixing sensations and different planes of reality, manipulating and translating, as happens in play. But it is also a work on the specific potential of images as such – artistic, photographic, cinematographic – and on the link between representation and power. The screening of the film is accompanied by an exhibition of drawings, stories and documents that project us inside an editing booth, where the artist’s words question family relationships and emotional ties. Stretching the dense mesh of history, subjective and personal stories emerge, made up of memories, traumas and suspended questions that are difficult to answer. With a surreal and almost bitter sense, which accompanies many of his works, Horobets explores issues related to memory, play, deviance, anxiety and the dynamics of power and conflict that can result.

Oleksandra Horobets

Born and raised in Starokostianteniv in Ukraine, Oleksandra Horobets moved to Italy in 2009, at the age of twelve, to be reunited with her mother. She first studied Cinema and Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and then Graphic Design and Photography Publishing at the ISIA in Urbino. Her current research is linked to the exploration of memory through play, manipulation, translation and decontextualisation of memories, an archive in progress centred on human activities, a spontaneous response to what happens and surrounds her.