The journals and fears of Alla Georgieva

Updates, breaking news, an avalanche of statements, TV presenters and politicians whose betrays surprise and a lack of control over events: this is what the public woke up to on February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The artist Alla Georgieva, who was born in Kharkiv in 1957 and has lived in Bulgaria since the early 1980s, is facing the same chaos of information, but understandably, it places an even greater emotional burden on her. Hours after the news broke, she completed her painting "The First Day of War," a way to explain to herself what happened amidst the ongoing trauma. Some of her family and friends are still under attack in the city.

 "The First Day", February 24, 2022, Alla Georgieva

"The first few days I was in shock, my hands were shaking, there was nothing I could do, I was crying and I could only focus on the news, including from Ukrainian channels. I watched which areas were being bombed by Russia. I don't know if one can get used to war. It is still very difficult for me to work on this topic," says Alla Georgieva, who in the 90s became one of the most interesting figures in our contemporary art scene.

She is a co-founder of the feminist art collective March 8, which was most active in the late 90s and early 00s. She uses various techniques, including caricature (she and her husband Chavdar Georgiev are active contributers to the satirical newspaper Pras-Press).

"Quiet Ukrainian Night",  2022, Alla Georgieva

Exploring the Ukrainian-Russian conflict through art

Over the last few years, Alla has worked on various projects linking the global and the personal. Her exhibition It's ours! A Museum of Couch Warriors (2015) at the Goethe Institute was in reaction to the protest wave in Ukraine in 2013 and the subsequent annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia, and combined self-portraits and vulgar Russian expressions that target Ukrainians and other peoples from the former Soviet region. Some became part of the language after the Euromaidan protests, while others have deeper roots, but they all demonstrate the rhetoric that the Kremlin has introduced over the years.

Life is a song, at Structure Gallery in 2018, was a synthesis of Alla's thoughts after the death of her mother from cancer, expressed in painting, objects, photography and drawings. In 2020, she showed her collection Museum of Women, which includes artifacts that show how pop culture and consumerism have represented women in recent decades.

Self-portrait "Hohlushka", part of the project It's ours! A Museum of Couch Warriors, 2015

Her work also shows us a bridge between the two recent crisis: the pandemic and the war. In 2021, the museum Kvadrat 500 showed her visual diary from the first lockdown: a series of drawings dedicated to the isolation in the early phase of the pandemic and the chaotic reactions to it. Alla says that this kind of documentation through drawings and texts is extremely important to her. "I feel the passage of time very keenly. I want to hold on to it at all costs, to stuff it, to stop it from slipping away, at least in my drawings. I want every moment of life to be sealed on paper. I know it's not possible, but I keep trying."

Is there a different process for the work she created two years ago during the Covid crisis and now, in the context of the war? For Alla, the difference between documenting pandemic anxiety and war anxiety is in the very different vantage points. If the isolation of 2020 offers an introverted experience, the war symbolizes active and impending aggression, the threat of constant change. The similarities between the wave of protests in Ukraine in 2013, the pandemic and the current war, lie in the passive participation or, as she says in jest, being part of the couch warrior division. For her, painting has remained a means of expression and a way to assert her position during these years.

A different tour of Kharkiv

Мost of us associate her hometown of Kharkiv with photographs of destruction, but in her memory the city with its rich history, especially in the visual arts, looks very different. In her stories, "there" quickly turns into "here." "Kharkiv, locals affectionately call it 'Ha', is a very special city." Alla says it has a very unique atmosphere. "It was founded as a Cossack settlement and the spirit of freedom here is very strong."

Self-portrait "Katsapka", part of the project It's ours! A Museum of Couch Warriors, 2015

Her childhood memories from the city of two million, as industrial (because of the local heavy industry) as it is forever young (because of its universities), are often connected to how difficult it is to find your way around. "It has always been very crowded, with overcrowded transport. I have a lot of relatives in different areas and getting to them was very tiring before they built the subway.” With the arduous journey behind her, everything else was idyllic: “My childhood was spent among many people, long crowded tables covered in food, and the Ukrainian songs that my relatives loved to sing.”

Because of her years in Kharkiv, she needs to be in a big city. "Life in Kharkiv is very dynamic and active. I'm used to this fast pace, I can't live in a quiet little town. I love Kharkiv architecture, I used to paint it a lot.”

Georgieva describes Kharkiv as a largely Russian-speaking city, surrounded by Ukrainian-only villages. This gave rise to a specific urban dialect called "surzhyk," a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, comprehensible only to locals. All this exists against the backdrop of many historical layers: Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian SSR between 1917-1934, which later became part of the USSR. The city suffered great casualties during World War II, and millions died during the Holodomor (1932-1933), the genocide by starvation targeting the Ukrainian population under Stalin's rule, details of which only emerged and were studied in later decades (see, for example, Agnieszka Holland's film Mr. Jonesand the book The Red Famine by Anne Applebaum).

Alla Georgieva's stories make it clear that if you are from Kharkiv, you are always from Kharkiv. "Locals are very devoted to their city, even those who have moved to distant countries never lose their emotional connection with it. It breaks my heart to watch the "rashists" bomb it day and night and kill civilians. I very much hope that Kharkiv can resist and revive itself from the ashes and ruins.”

More from Alla Georgieva: allageorgieva.blogspot.com