InFlight_OnLanding

A public art project by Varvara Keidan Shavrova and 10 Ukrainian women participants For Refugee Week 2023

20 – 27 JUNE 2023
Opening/Photo call event: Monday 19 June at 12 noon. All welcome.

InFlight_OnLanding is a public art installation that addresses the human aspect of the crisis brought on by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Varvara Keidan Shavrova, an Irish artist with Ukrainian heritage, is working collaboratively with ten Ukrainian female refugees and migrants now based in Ireland. 

The impressive collaborative piece will be mounted as an overhead outdoor parachute-like installation in Meeting House Square. The artwork invites viewers to look up and share in the women’s feelings of suspension and displacement and their sense that Ireland is a place of safety and refuge.

Between March and June, the group created artworks exploring the women’s responses to events of the last 18 months. They worked on personally meaningful photographic images, through appliqué, montage and traditional Ukrainian folk craft embroidery techniques, as well as silkscreen printing on fabric. Undertaking this tactile, meditative, process created a space where the women could process and reflect on their own experiences and share aspects of their stories in visual form. 

A personal testimony from one of the women artists: 

‘It is the very beginning of spring and I arrived in Dublin three weeks ago. On the road of timelessness, between Februaries. Like jumping into the abyss. For the first time. When you have a parachute under your belt, but you never know for sure, what if it's the one, the only time it won't open?...And as I stand at the edge of the abyss, staring into the thick, bottomless darkness, I have only a parachute behind me.’

– Tetiana Odokiienko (Kharkiv)

Further examples of the women’s work, and videos about the workshop process, are on display in the Artists' Project Space in Photo Museum Ireland.

Participants: Tetiana Kovalova (Kyiv), Svitlana Litmanova (Chmielnickyi), Olha Matso (Kyiv), Anna Mosina (Mariupol), Katerina Naumova (Mariupol), Tetiana Odokiienko (Kharkiv), Tetiana Piontkovska (Kyiv), Liubov Poltavets (Enerhodar), Svetlana Vicheva (Artsyz), Maryna Zaretska (Kyiv).

The artist, participants and Photo Museum Ireland thank: David McGinn and Black Church Print Studio; Rory O’Neill, Anastasiia Kovalchuk, Svitlana Falenda, Oksana Starzhynska at Irish Refugee Council; Ambo Architects; and Irene Sanchez Alonso. 

Varvara Keidan Shavrova and individual art project members (English speaking) are available for interview, by appointment. 

For more information contact: 
Tanya Kiang,  Photo Museum Ireland  tanya@photomuseumireland.ie 086 8886959
Yvonne Judge, Ukraine Civil Society Forum  hello@yvonnejudge.ie 087 6624775

Supported by: Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund in partnership with Business to Arts.

About the Artist:
Varvara Keidan Shavrova is a visual artist, curator, educator and researcher. Born in the USSR, she lives and works between London, Dublin, and Berlin. She studied at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, received her MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been awarded Arts & Humanities Research Council Studentship by London Arts & Humanities Partnership, to conduct her practice-based PhD at the Royal College of Art in London. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Gallery of Photography Ireland, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Espacio Cultural El Tanque, Tenerife. Shavrova curated international visual arts projects, including The Sea is the Limit at York Art Gallery (2018) and Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar (2019), and co-curated Beijing Map Games: Dynamics of Change , an international art and architecture exhibition in Beijing (China), Birmingham (UK) and Terni (Italy). She is the recipient of the National Lottery Arts Council of England Project Awards (2019-2020 and 2020-2021), the Arts Council Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award (2021), and the Prince’s Trust Individual Artist’s Award, among others. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections worldwide, including the Department of the Foreign Affairs of Ireland, the Office of Public Works art collection in Dublin, the Ballinglen Arts Foundation collection in County Mayo, and the Museum of the History of St.Petersburg in Russia. Shavrova is represented by Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London.