32/22, 2022
Polaroids, Ukrainian wheat, 21х15 cm.
In Ukraine bread is a sacred food. Bread is forbidden to throw out, spoil, or waste. It should always be on the table. With the bread, we welcome people into our homes and give them a piece of bread on the road. It doesn’t connect to Christianity’s symbol of bread as the body of Jesus Christ.
In Ukraine bread is a trauma of a couple of generations that were born in the XX century. In 1932 the Soviet executives created an artificial famine in the territory of Ukraine. The execution was settled for picking up the spikelets on the fields. If you bury the bag with grain in your garden, it would be dug out and confiscated. The troops of Red Army soldiers emptied storages with bread and other products in the peasant’s homes. Someone dared to a dangerous trip to the town to save the family. The lucky ones come back home and the family survived. That is how the family of my neighbor survived. Those who had no luck died on the streets of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Someone couldn’t leave the village because of the prohibition for peasants to leave their villages.
In 2022 I’m watching the burning wheat field because of the Russian war against Ukraine. In one hundred years history repeats itself. I almost physically feel the burns of these fragile plants. At the same ti,e I understand that every spikelet has become a weapon in the hands of another Russian dictator. The one who possesses the bread possesses the country. Ukrainian collective wound has opened again.
Olga Chekotovska 