Welcome to meet the artist Tetiana Kornieleva and hear about her projects Thu 22.12 to Oulu-AiRs artist studio at 5pm

Studio is located in Suomen Pankki building (Kajaaninkatu 8) – notice that the entrance to the studio space is on Torikatu side of the building (3th floor). 

“invisible memories”

Project “invisible memories” is dedicated to the formation of memories of a certain place and the relationships between human and architecture. 

In the process of its lite, architecture changes, acquires a certain energy, living childhood, adolescence, old age. It is customary to take care of old buildings, as they are a combination of collective memory and preserve memories of previous generations, reflecting the idea of Zeitgeist (spirit of the time). Our family home preserves the personal history of 4 generations. And its appearance is the spirit of the time in a sense, because it is a kind of traditional Ukrainian house. Each generation of my family has made some changes, but the foundation remains the same. And it’s a very powerful place, a museum in a sense, but w e still use it as a living space. In my project I compare our old house with a former boiler room, museum Kesselhaus Herzberge in Berlin, which served as the source of heat, warm water and electricity for more than one hundred years. Now it’s a historically protected monument and it will be saved as a historical building. I explore the collisions between private and public and think how to save the voice of personal story, told through our family house.

«Not found»

During the last months, I worked with documents from Odesa State Archive, which consist of the filtering cases of Ukrainians from Odesa and Odesa region, who were sent to Germany for forced labor during the Second World War. Many forced laborers who were deported after the de-occupation and liberation of Germany disappeared and were declared wanted by the Soviet Union. The repatriation of Ostarbeiters from the Soviet zone of occupation was forced, but the people who were to return home underwent a procedure of humiliating filtering and interrogation. First on the territory of Germany, then – on the territory of the Soviet Union. Neighbors and acquaintances of repatriates were also interrogated, and those who tried to evade filtering were declared wanted by the All-Union. Many of the repatriates changed German labor camps or concentration camps to Soviet ones, and therefore many people hid, changing their names and surnames, and returning to Soviet Ukraine, chose a new place of residence where they had no acquaintances. This project is designed to give a view of the repressive acts of Soviet Union through the lens of colonial theory.

The name of the project is related to a typical phrase used by Soviet police officers in cases of people who were hiding from filtering.