(c) Archive Kathleen Bomani
Anna Scherbyna, »Kein Kirschgarten. Birke«, 2022, Photo: Aline Xavier Mineiro
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine the perspective of ordinary Ukrainians on many issues has changed including attitudes toward trees. Tree names are now associated with the names of weapons. Common beech, poplar and pear are no longer creatures with emerald crowns and fruits, but a strategic missile system, a cruise missile and a nuclear submarine, as the names of these trees are used by the Russian military for their weapons.
The audiovisual installation Kein Kirschgarten (Not a Cherry Orchard) aims to describe the war through specific tree-related stories by Ukrainian playwrights that bear the names of weapons.
Illustrations accompanying these stories, drawn by Anna Scherbyna, underscore the blurred boundaries of wartime reality. Fifteen mini-texts were written by Ukrainian playwrights of the Playwright’s Theater, translated by Lydia Nigel and subsequently read by actresses and actors from the theater Schauspiel Stuttgart. These are the stories of people who, like trees, have been uprooted and have lost their lands.
The installation was developed in the context of Luda Tymoshenko’s and Anna Scherbyna’s Jean-Jacques Rousseau fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude and in close cooperation with Schauspiel Stuttgart.
Artistic Directors: Luda Tymoshenko, Anna Scherbyna
Illustrations: Anna Scherbyna
Authors: Luda Tymoshenko, Lena Lagushonkova, Natalia Blok, Anastasiia Kosodii, Tetiana Kytsenko, Kateryna Penkova, Oksana Grytsenko, Iryna Harets, Andrii Bondarenko, Olena Hapieieva, Ihor Bilyts, Olha Matsiupa, Pavlo Arie, Oksana Savchenko, Julia Gonchar.
Luda Tymoshenko is a dramatist, screenwriter, artist and university lecturer from Kyiv/Ukraine. In 2000, she graduated from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv/Ukraine with a degree in philosophy. She works as a lecturer in sociology and political science at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. She began writing (screen)plays and drawing in 2013.
Anna Scherbyna is an artist, illustrator, and curator. Her practice examines the critical potential of a range of media including installation and video, drawing and painting. Her works cover a wide range of topics including natural landscapes and their political connotations, war, gender performativity and violence and the heritage of social realism. She also demonstrates an interest in and sensitivity to the distribution of power and knowledge, and uses her imagination to envision possible futures.
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