-by Justina Špeirokaité (Curator at Improper Walls)

The world of my dreams is not complete and unresolved. It will have a space for the existence and emergence of the unattainable, the unspeakable and the unknown. Kateryna Lysovenko[1]

Kateryna Lysovenko was born in 1989 in Ukraine and currently lives and works in Vienna. She has recently participated in the exhibition “Goodbye East, Goodbye Narcissus!” at the Contemporary Art Museum Estonia (EKKM). The exhibition’s curator, Tanel Rander, sought to discern “East Europe” as an ideological project that harbors aesthetics, symbolisms and values from Soviet times and thus plays into the hands of the Russian regime justifying war and expansion politics.

Kateryna’s work exhibited at EKKM centered around sports—a domain that oppressive regimes have used throughout history to establish hero(ine) figures as carriers of national faith. Her visual language refers us, on the one hand, to the ancient Olympic games and, on the other, to Socialist Realist sculpture glorifying labor. Both contexts hinge on the representation of fitness and the able-bodied subject. Once the ideal of a “successful” body is established, it becomes possible to dehumanize the bodies of the “Other” (the competitor, the opponent, the enemy). In warfare, this is an essential strategy to facilitate killing. Analogous to sports, war relies on the promise that there will be a winner—but at what price? Kateryna Lysovenko exposes the alleged hero(in)es of her paintings as mere game participants who walk over dead bodies for the sake of victory. (Introduction by Marlene Lahmer)

Interviewed and transcribed by Justina Špeirokaitė in June 2023 in Vienna. The text was edited for clarity.

On universal (Western) mythology and regional perspective…

Kateryna Lysovenko (KL) Museums are full of Western countries' historical artifacts. Odessa region was a Greek colony about which many people don’t know. The area where I grew up has many ancient ruins I used to walk in. However, in the history museums in Western Europe or Central Europe, you won’t find ruins from the Odesa Crimea region.

If you look again at the borders of ancient Greece, it included waste territories on the east, reaching the Caucasus and even Kazakhstan, but the fact is not widely acknowledged as the result of change and inclusion in new political systems, and now we’re in the process of exclusion, or excluding ourselves.

On the other hand, much of the old Slavic mythology in Ukraine was lost due to Christianization, so the worldwide 19th-century modernist revival of ancient Greek mythology blossomed in Ukraine, too. It was also related to national movements happening all over Europe. In both Germany and the Soviet Union, fascists and Bolsheviks used the same narrative of the greatest cultural heritage belonging to their nations.

Local mythologies have strange roots; a lot of books and other sources were burned, and if you start working with them, you realize that the field is very difficult. And you might find yourself in unknown and unwanted territory. Regarding Slavic gods, on one side, it’s about roots, but on the other side, I don't see something I can take and criticize nowadays. For me, it is more important how violence works and how decommunization works, and in ancient mythologies, I search for it. You can see how the figure in fear and danger appears and what the figure of the ideal looks like. Ideal is a danger for us because it is the instrument of repression. In totalitarian states, politics emphasizes the ideal human and so has a lot of sympathy for ancient mythology.

Recently, my friend asked me if we could work on something related to Tripolye, the ancient Ukrainian culture, which was very high. In nazi times, Germans were saying that Tripolye was their culture, and all Germans came to this territory, established this high culture and then went back. I can paraphrase my friend and some philosophers that every century has its own antiques. Nowadays, antiquity is also about queerness, enjoying life, and living with nature. Before, it was about magic, secret cults, and heroes.

About participation in the “Goodbye East, Goodbye Narcissus!” exhibition…

KL: In this exhibition, I worked with the appearance of violence. It was a nice experience to work with curator Tanel Rander and other artists and an interesting one in Estonia's context. The country is also under the shadow of Russian imperial ambitions, and many Russians live there, around fifty percent in Tallinn. Some are integrated and have the same values as people in democratic countries. Still, some live in a kind of ghetto, are under the influence of Russian propaganda, and don’t integrate themselves, working jobs that don’t require knowing the Estonian language.

There’s a noticeable confrontation in the public space, where the government is removing the traces of (soviet) imperialism, and pro-Russian citizens are standing against that. By law (in Estonia), you can’t use Soviet symbols in public, but people are still creating graffiti.

I really like Estonia; people are nice, stylish and beautiful, but the situation is very dangerous there because they are a little country, have a significant Russian minority, and many pro-Putin views. It is a fascinating world. As in Austria, people often don’t understand you; in Estonia, everyone is aware of the Russian propaganda machine. Once, I saw a scene that reminded me of Ukraine in the 90s in some depressed region. Next to the local supermarket, a guy was screaming and beating his girlfriend; they were both drunk. In general, domestic violence in communities of Russian-speaking people is huge. So, people living in Estonia can understand the world of certain Russians and why certain things happen better than people here in Austria.

There is psychological research on how, for Russian people, enjoying isn’t about having a good life by having something you own but having a superpower to destroy, which is given by a dictator. People from the West cannot completely understand until they meet it. The mother of my Austrian boyfriend still remembers pure violence for nothing in Russian-occupied Vienna after World War II.

©Courtesy of Kateryna Lysovenko, photo: Paul Kuimet

About ableism…

KL: The education system excludes different bodies. I refer here to the works of Butler and Foucault. As Foucault described, school and sports occupy the body more and more: at first, in sport, you had to go and run, not faster, and then through time, it evolved to more and faster, more obedient. So now it’s not only important to go, but how well you perform; you should become better and better. At school, we got into controlling more and more.

Totalitarianism is a more intensive form of obedience imposed onto the body. Any care about individual people ceases to exist, and people become objects for the goals of elites and ideologies. In this situation, you cannot speak about an individual body that belongs to somebody. It is only an object for transformation, for the realization of some goals, and all subjects are excluded from this system.

It is also how socialist realism imagines the body…

KL: Socialist realism emerged from violence, where many of the pioneer artists of the era were killed by the new regime. There were many debates on how to depict the 'ideal' body of the 'goal-reacher'; it had to be understandable to every person in society. You could see suffering during this process as the style was implemented with violence and oppression.

About removing monuments…

KL: The paradox of the decommunization is that it was something other, brought from Russia. The problem is that terror doesn’t work in a way that some Russian people came and killed everybody. Terror works like people from Lithuania, Georgia, and other post-Soviet countries changed because of the strong political violence that forces people to change themselves. And so people took part in crime everywhere.

I think it would be better not to remove (the past) but rather research it because Russia shows imperial ambitions again, and it would be better to understand what it was. If you say it’s not me, it is false. Some symbolic figures and dates sure can be removed, and it was after the fall of the Soviet Union, but especially books and cultural heritage you cannot just throw away. Better research it. What makes the Soviet Union like the Avantgarde project: they cut all the heritage and said that now everything old will disappear and everything will be new, but culture doesn’t work like this; culture needs consequences and connections, and we have to connect with all the history.

Terror stole something from us. As one researcher and thinker wrote, terror creates crime and then destroys even tracks of this crime, but it would be better to make this crime visible because, for the rest of the world, the Soviet Union is not a criminal. Even today, there are people saying Putin is okay, we have to make peace, and everything will be fine. People who know history better would disagree, saying that Russia will not stop at any border and between Austria and Ukraine is only one country. And Russia is repeating like a mantra that they will go to Berlin. So, people cannot recognize the crime and cannot imagine what can come for them.

Justina Špeirokaité (JŠ): Leftists here in Austria use Soviet communism symbols without having the knowledge—not knowing that communism is a utopia and never worked in reality…

KL: People are naïve to believe that they know everybody and can control everybody; they believe in their technology and their order, and they cannot imagine that there can be a more destructive technology.

On the topic of violence…

KL: When you start thinking about Ukraine's culture, you read about a lot of violence. About the destruction of art in the Soviet Union every ten years when political parties changed, the decommunization in Ukraine, the war in 2014 and also the story of my family. Many people died from Jewish and other family sides. For example, I don't know who the parents of my grandmother were; all her family was killed even before the nazis came in a pogrom which was organized by 'chernosotentsy'—right-wing people who organized pogroms in all parts of the Russian empire. It was an example of how imperialism and politics turned accumulated anger in people into antisemitism. People in my family also died in the wars because of the collectivization consequence of Holodomor. At the entrance to the art academy in Kyiv, there's a monument with the list of all killed artists in Soviet times—so violence is there with you, too.

I started studying in Kyiv during the Maidan, and when Russia occupied Donbas, a lot of people, a lot of students came from Donbas who studied at Lugansk Academy back then. I saw how part of society tried to exclude those people. They were blamed for the war because Russia's propaganda said they were rebels. Of course, there were also people who supported the Russian side, mostly criminal groups.

There's also a big problem with domestic abuse. It is normalized in many circles. My personal story is that I experienced a lot of abuse in my family. My ex-husband was abusive. I only understood it as violence when I started therapy; when you live with it, you don't recognize it as violence.

And then you understand that it is very connected with language and images. At first, violence appears on a symbolic level and then in reality.

JŠ: So, violence is induced by a societal situation influenced by a system, not a grassroots condition…

Oh, I think it has a hierarchy. In a platonic world with ideas that come from people, it’s all together; people reproduce language and images with people at the bottom of the hierarchy where violence apparently exists. It is more resonant, like a net, not like something only from top to bottom, but also as a horizontal spread.

About being a feminist…

KL: My story is that I come from a poor, marginalized and conservative family. And then, as a miracle, one teacher who was an architect and engaged communist activist in the little city near Odesa where I grew up noticed my drawings and told my grandmother that I should study art, and helped me without charging for teaching me realistic drawing in order for me to get into school. It's how communism idealogy helped me personally.

First, I studied at the pedagogical university, which had painting classes, but I left it for art college, which my teacher didn't approve of. That's where our collaboration ended. When I was at the art academy, things changed as I learned more about contemporary art. At that time, I already had two children, and I had to become a feminist if I wanted to survive—to have the motivation to go on with my studies.

I got in contact with some feminist artists; they supported me morally and were my friends. So, it was a long way to feminism. If I had met anyone with the feminist approach earlier in my life, it would have turned differently, easier. I got married and got my children very young because I didn't know another way of life.

In the years before the war, you still had to get help from the police during feminist events because of the aggressive right-wing people. Our exhibition with a feminist point was also attacked. It was at the university when right-wing people destroyed our artworks, and the police took the works as evidence and never returned them, as the police are also conservative. So, our feminism IS activism.

On collaboration with feminist activists…

I asked them not to use feminist and LGBT+ community symbols. In the academy, I was also under oppression, but I learned how to do what I wanted and make people understand me. If you want to connect people, not only to create a struggle and help entrepreneurs understand you, you show something you have in common. It is better not to use symbols because they can be perceived immediately very aggressively, and people will not hear you. Of course, there are situations when using symbols is important. But if you want to change something and not just get five boys fighting with you, we can redraw our dreams of what we really want instead. You don’t want rainbows but love and care, understanding. You can even draw homosexual sex to which people will not react immediately as much as they would to the symbols.

On dreaming and reimagining...

KL: Reality is not perfect. Reality is shit. But we can change it, and you can make your struggles easier. I try to rationalize everything and control my emotions in order to change something. But to change something, you have to understand your opponents. Not in every case, it might work, though. If I go with the nice poster to the Wagner group, it will not work because they believe that people like me shouldn’t exist. Individual life has no importance for them. We all belong to big systems. The idea of the motherland is strong, so the situation is hard.

JŠ: They have no dreams for a better future…

KL: They wish and envision being the greatest. They dream about power. In a totalitarian society, you do not have so much possibility as an individual; you can’t change much, but you have absolute control over others who are in the excluded group. And you can end up in this excluded group yourself if the leader decides. There’s a pleasure in power.

It’s also difficult for people in Ukraine who are not Ukrainian. It sucks.

On the interspaces of the islands…

KL: We have many global problems, like ecological problems, so I think humanity can only survive if we go further from the national states. I believe that people will live in other systems. I hate schools; I hate universities; I hate nation-states. I think all systems are dangerous, and every time, it shows you that you don’t belong to yourself. As a human, you are not important. This system also kills the planet and different lives, so we need to change it, and everything will be good. Or it will be some catastrophe because you can create some island in the world which burns and think that everything is going to be ok in this little place, no, we have to be together.

JŠ: Are you optimistic?

KL: No. It can end ok, but it will be a lot of shit first. First, the environmental problems, then more and more isolated nation-states that will try to save themselves. Right politics get more power in Europe, so this right-wing wave should come, create a lot of shit so people understand that everything is broken, and then maybe it will turn back. It’s dangerous because, usually, right-wing means dictatorship.

JŠ: We need to restart…

KL: This idea of restarting is very dangerous, too. It reminds me of the mood before WW1. People felt they needed to change something, but they didn’t know how, so a huge catastrophe happened. And now we have much more dangerous technology. I hope this planet, and we, will survive, that would be nice.

JŠ: Powerful together as people…

KL: And not only people, together we will make more.

INTERVIEW WITH KATERYNA LYSOVENKO