Ukrainian Artists at OFF-Biennale Budapest
The works of Ukrainian artists Nikita Kadan, Kateryna Aliinyk, and the Open Group are presented at the exhibitions “these walls are not here to protect us” and “Emergency Frequencies”, which are held with the support of the Ukrainian Institute as part of the largest art event in Hungary – OFF-Biennale Budapest 2025.
Photo: Dávid Biró © OFF-Biennale Budapest Archive
Kateryna Aliinyk’s work “Death on a Summer Afternoon” (2024) depicts not a heroic image, but a figure curled up in fear and defenselessness. The presence of grief and violence does not necessarily lead to growth or nobility. This work about fragility in the face of horror is presented in the exhibition “these walls are not here to protect us”. The title of the exhibition is taken from a poem by Rebeka Kupihár and explores the themes of safety and security in the contemporary world through the symbol of the wall – both physical and metaphorical – that arises in response to fear, threat or the desire for control.
Photo: Dávid Biró © OFF-Biennale Budapest Archive
The second exhibition of the Biennale’s program, “Emergency Frequencies”, is presented in a former World War II bomb shelter and explores the sound of war as a physical, psychological and historical phenomenon. The works in the exhibition decipher, deconstruct, recompose and re-record the sounds of wars, offering a vision of a possible future in which weapons may eventually fall silent.
Nikita Kadan’s work “Inhabitants of the Colosseum” is an audio installation of the sound of the procession known as the “death march”, when prisoners in the concentration camp in Regenburg were marched in wooden shoes across the city’s stone bridge. To create the installation, more than 200 people walked across this bridge, recreating the sounds that echoed in the city from April 23 to May 3, 1945.
The second work at the exhibition, “Repeat After Me II” by the Open Group, explores sound as a body-embedded knowledge of war. The video installation depicts displaced persons from Ukraine who were asked to reproduce the sounds of different types of weapons, from small arms to air bombs. Distinguishing weapons by their sound has become a tool for the survival of Ukrainians in the frontline areas, and the work of the Open Group is a testament to the embodiment and communication of the experience of war through sound.
Photo: Judit Vörös © OFF-Biennale Budapest Archive
OFF-Biennale Budapest runs from May 8 to June 15, 2025.