TBA21 on st_age presented a selection of filmic works and moving images by contemporary artists from Ukraine titled A Letter From the Front, curated by artist Nikita Kadan (Kiev, 1982) with Giulia Colletti, from May 9-22, 2022. 

Ukrainian artists who shared their works are mobilizing within or outside the borders of the war-torn country, measuring themselves against distances through their own bodies. Some of them were unable to recover their hard drives before leaving their homes and studios, and therefore this project can only deal with the ways in which artworks are saved in digital format on servers, clouds and web platforms.

“The greater the distances are between all of us, the more united we feel in our demand to stop the Russian aggression in Ukraine. We could not be more solidary than we are now, while we face the fact that years of political struggles are in danger of dissolving and going up in smoke. The selection of filmic works and moving images presented on this occasion do not strictly speak of the new war. They are rather evidence of the work that has been done (or we thought we had done) to prevent the conflict. These works can be seen as a premonition of an evident and inevitable catastrophe, which too often in the history of Ukraine has been tangible.” (participating artists)

This programme A Letter From the Front was originally commissioned and produced by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin, after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was curated by Nikita Kadan with Giulia Colletti.