Returning Through Memory: Family Archives
Kateryna Volochniuk
University of St. Andrews24.10.2024; 18:30
Municipal Art Center, 11 Stefanyka St.
We invite you to a lecture by Kateryna Volochniuk, which is part of the accompanying program for the exhibition "Domowroty / ПОВЕРНЕННЯ / Homing. Włodzimierz Puchalski."
The fragility of archives in Ukraine is becoming more and more apparent, and interest in them extends far beyond research to artistic practices. In this context, Ariella Azoulay's thesis about archival fever, a concept she borrowed from Jacques Derrida, comes to mind. Azoulay argues that archives are not just static repositories of the past, but active agents that interact with the present. The connection of archival materials to the war, which connects the past and the future, forms a broader public interest in history, preservation, and the possibility of returning home through the act of remembrance and the reconstruction of lost archives.
The Shepeliuks' archive is one of the family archives in Ukraine that can be viewed at the intersection of family and industrial history. The main materials in the archive belong to Oleksii Shepeliuk, a photographer and editor of the Lepse factory's newspaper in Kyiv in 1963-1970. Part of the collection was lost during the Russian occupation of Donetsk in 2014.
During the lecture, we will discuss what can be called an archive, how to work with family documents and photographs, and how archives move between different locations, physical and virtual spaces before and during the war. We will also discuss what photographic practices and social connections the archive of a factory photographer can reveal.
Kateryna Volochniuk
University of St. AndrewsArt historian and researcher. She is pursuing her PhD at the University of St. Andrews with the support of the SGSAH and is a research fellow at The New Centre for Research & Practice. Her research focuses on the intersection of photographic history and memory studies. Her work has been published in Korydor, Your Art, ArtsLooker, and Ukraine verstehen. At the Center for Urban History, she is currently on a research residency, digitizing and processing her family archive, which will become part of the Urban Media Archive.
Drawing on the metaphor of "returns," which is particularly sensitive today, the series "Domowroty / ПОВЕРНЕННЯ / Homing" actualizes reflections on the constant process of physical and material return, as well as emotional and intellectual reflections on what is place, belonging, and connection. The public program is part of the project "Homing: Returns of People, Places and Archive." The project is implemented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine.
The exhibition "Domowroty / ПОВЕРНЕННЯ / Homing" is organized by Andrij Bojarov, Center for Urban History and Lviv Municipal Art Center in partnership with the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Lviv and Department of Culture of the Lviv City Council.
Credits
Cover Image: From the Shepeliuk family's trip to visit friends in the Carpathians, circa 1968 // photo by Oleksii Shepeliuk// Shepeliuk family archive
Gallery: Volodymyr Voznyi