The Nameless River | project |

installation, graphics, ceramics, painting, 250x660x600

2024

"There are rivers that have no name of their own: they are called tributaries of more well-known rivers, or simply listed in the water registry as ‘unnamed watercourse.’ And when I imagine my river of memory—slow, cold, with dark, thick fresh water—I think it must be one of them. A nameless watershed between life and death—a tributary of the mythical river Ocean.

What has passed, what never came to be, what now feels almost impossible to believe in—the unnamed river will take it all without discrimination, wash it, cool it, hide it. No matter how many times you return as a fisherman, no matter how hard you try to uncover the truth, you only drill more holes—and even those will freeze over soon. It’s a foolish task. And yet, again and again, you go back to the river: to catch a glimpse, to stand at the edge, or to hide something away until better times. Until brighter days, until clear memory, until the love that spans from one edge of my wound to the other.”

— Olya Makhno

Curators: Zhanna Bobrakova, Mikhail Levin