FROM SOUTH TO NORTH
Alevtina Kakhidze’s art project is focused on working through the imperial past, a matter of relevance for Ukraine and Malta alike. It symbolically connects Malta with Odesa—the gateway city that connects the Ukrainian steppe to the Mediterranean—and invites visitors to look from Malta in the direction of Ukraine, from South to North. This optic presents the port city of Odesa as being located not in the south of the Russian/Soviet empire but rather in the north of the Mediterranean region.
Alevtina Kakhidze’s project comprises a video piece, shot in Odesa in early 2024 in collaboration with the artist Roman Khimei, a site-specific installation, and the happening From Malta to Yalta in a public space. Through the mirror of her family’s history, the artist analyzes how an empire has ruined the lives of generations and how its influence, although at times unnoticed, eventually manifests itself. Kakhidze superimposes the history of her own family on the events of the 20th century in Ukraine and Europe, while also drawing a connection to the 21st century by continuing the story via a narration of her personal experience during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian Pavilion at the maltabiennale.art offers a glimpse at the ramifications of relationships between colonies and empires that might be less evident for Europe,” Oksana Dolgopolova and Kateryna Semenyuk, who curate the Pavilion, explain. “The questions about the colonial past heard from the far south of Europe can reveal to the world Ukraine’s special position as a millennium-old civilization hub living in the shadow of imperial grievances and aggression.”
Alevtina Kakhidze
From South to North,
installation for Malta biennale
mixed media, 2024
ALL GOOD ?
Alevtina Kakhidze shot All Good ? with Roman Khimei in Odessa in early 2024. She takes us to an old rope factory and the Maritime Academy, following in the footsteps of her parents and grandparents.
The film and the installation in fact revolve around a sort of script that proceeds through fragments of her memory starting from the meeting of her parents in Odessa. Her mother from Donetsk (the region where the Russian aggression began in February 2022) arrived in the city to work in a steel cable factory (from an Empire in which it was forbidden to move from one area to another without a permit) driven by the sole desire to live by the sea, while her father, a Georgian, arrived in Odessa to attend the Navy.
Alevtina Kakhidze : I was intrigued to visit some crucial places in the life of my parents in Odessa who are still active, namely the steel cable factory where my mother worked before I was born and the military academy where my father studied to join the infantry of navy. They both loved the sea. The film is a way to question them, I imagined that my father was with me in these places and while I was filming I asked myself what determined the event of their meeting, the sea or the “Russian Empire” which was then the USSR, that is one country for both Georgians and Ukrainians. I was interested in bringing this story into a decolonization perspective, it’s true, but if I think about it, my family never talked about colonization. It is just the story of my family told in a completely personal way. Of course it’s a very sad story, my mother went to work in one of the most dangerous and heaviest factories in the country only to get pregnant and have to return to Donbas to raise me and die exhausted at a checkpoint while returning from a visit to my aunt in Ukraine, which also had a tragic history when her home was destroyed by missiles in a very recent attack. So many harsh and dramatic events can affect just one family. ( interview of Alevtina Kahidze by Antonella Buttazzo for Juliet Art magazine).
All Good ? 2024, 20 min, Odesa
video performance based on real events
Alevtina Kakhidze, Roman Khimei, Paulo Litovkin, Vadim Khudoliy, Kristina Shyshkaroua, Ga.Eva.
FROM MALTA TO YALTA
Happening.
The event took place on a ferry ride from Cospicua to Valletta, the capital of Malta, on the 14th of March. Using a megaphone, Kakhidze welcomed everyone to an imaginary trip to Yalta, referring to the Malta Summit, where the end of the Cold War was proclaimed in 1989. During the happening, she spoke about Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014. Among other things, Kakhidze mentioned imprisoned Ukrainians in Crimea who were arrested by the Russian police for political reasons without any precedent. One of them is Leniye Umerova—a Crimean Tatar who went to Crimea to visit her sick father and is threatened to be sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Russian authorities.