Pravda Public Programme : Intergenerational Trauma
Daria Khozhai
4 March 2023

‘Pravda’, a solo-presentation by interdisciplinary artist and architect, Daria Khozhai, is a deeply personal translation of the public experience of loss and collective trauma - an intimate rumination on the uncertainties of our current times and our future. ‘Pravda’, consists of a 1:1 scale model of her childhood room in Kyiv. The walls of the installation are constructed from countless layers of hand-laid newspapers dated from 1991, the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-establishment of Ukraine's state independence. Following the Russian attacks on Ukraine, the memory of Khozhai’s first home suffered a traumatic displacement, compelling her to painstakingly recreate her room by revealing the layers of its own history. ‘Pravda’, the title of Khozhai’s exhibition, as well as a historically instrumental newspaper, translates to ‘truth’. Considering questions such as ‘How do you commemorate or memorialize the absent or missing?’, the work incites us to fill the space with our own reflections, memories, and relationships to the past in our present.

To accompany the installation Khozhai and Looiersgracht 60 have invited Anja Novak, historian and professor of modern and contemporary art and theory, for a public discussion around the themes of ‘Intergenerational Trauma’. Novak will reflect on the experience of inheriting trauma from those before us and the position of art in addressing these complex issues. Novak will also explore how the collective experience of art can help individuals get in touch and process experiential structures and remnants of trauma that they might not have been able to access otherwise.

This discussion with Anja Novak will take place on Saturday March 4, 2023 from 16:00-17:00 at Looiersgracht 60. Please email us at info@looiersgracht60.org with any questions or to reserve a seat.

Anja Novak

Anja Novak is a historian of modern and contemporary art and professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Arts and Culture department and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM). Her research focuses on art that operates at the intersection of various disciplines, such as the visual arts, performance, architecture, landscape design, and heritage. Another focus of her research is the way in which artworks trigger affective responses, and in particular how art can enable active engagement with traumatic aspects of the past. Her research is connected to affect theory, to the environmental humanities, and to ecological-enactive cognitive science.