They were here
Art group They
Residence Sorry No Rooms Available
September 28 – October 11, 2024
Double room 1114, Hotel Intourist-Zakarpattia
Group text:
“Everything that is about to be said is already in the past. All that the artist wants to show us is what he has already done, what will create his history, the history of his personal project, what he presents as a gift to Eternity with a sense of great secrecy. But we have already started talking about plans for the future. There is a common question at the end of all interviews. It’s a sticky, obsessive desire to somehow stay in eternity, to cling to something, to something. Or maybe you could just ask someone to throw you out to sea when the time comes, so that only the fish would know that you existed (that you was). This idea is very intoxicating with its poeticism, the feeling of being involved in something almost imperceptible, and attracts with the prospect of dissolving into the great and again eternal. But what is this fuss about inscriptions on the land for? Why do we constantly read these extremely important messages for someone like: “Vasya was here”? What do they tell us? Were they here? They want someone to know about them, to remember them. But why? No one knows who this Vasya is. Sometimes there is still a date. Maybe the person plans to return to this place from time to time. “I came under this tree,” reads one of the inscriptions carved into the bark of a tree on Pohulanka in Lviv. In the end, it is clear that this is about memory.
Ruslan Tremba and Oleh Suslenko formed the art group They, which in fact has always existed, but Oleh and Ruslan just didn’t know it. On August 1, 2024, they found out that they were They: an art group consisting of two artists with a wandering artistic orientation. It must be said that, in addition to another step towards finding themselves in time and space, Ruslan and Oleh are quite interesting, talented, hardworking, intelligent, sensitive, skillful, beautiful, creative, resourceful, funny, sometimes sad, sometimes emotional living people. Each of them has done a lot to make this true, but at the same time, many in the contemporary Ukrainian art industry can confidently say that no, they haven’t. And they would be very close to the truth. Today, they are: Oleh Suslenko and Ruslan Tremba multiply their efforts by two in an attempt to understand where they came from and what they came with. The artists’ joint project They Were Here, which they present at the residency Sorry, No Rooms Available at the Zakarpattia Hotel, is another answer to a homework assignment that each of the participants asked themselves instead of the teacher. What did you do when you were at the SNRA residency? What you did in these two months. What they did when they were here”.
The SNRA residency program draws attention to the role of culture and art during the russian-Ukrainian war, aims to implement institutionally critical projects related to cultural heritage (tangible and intangible), development of artistic-cultural institutions.
The SNRA residency program, the project and the participation of the Art group They were implemented thanks to grant support from The Académie des beaux-arts in Paris (French Academy of Fine Arts)
Photo credit: 1-13 – Mykhailo Melnychenko; 14-16 – Petro Ryaska
A view to the exhibition. Photo credit 1-4, 9-13 Petro Ryaska; 5-8 Mykhailo Melnychenko
