BEYOND THE CROPS

VITA KOTYK, MAKSYM FINOGEEV
29.08.2026 - 20.09.2026

Second part of the exhibition INSTRUCTIONS for [PRE/AB]SENCE represented by the project Beyond the Crop that emerges as a topography of the repressed, formed at the intersection of the Soviet cultivation of guilt and shame and the contemporary market-driven imperative to become the ‘best version of oneself.’ It is an analysis of the digital landscapes of experience, suspended between the shadow of the Soviet repressive apparatus and the capitalist dictate of success. Internal self-censorship appears here as an automatic response to the pressure of both past and present: one’s own story is ‘cropped’ before the shutter button is even pressed, leaving everything ‘inconvenient’ or ‘unattractive’ outside the frame. — Maksym Finogeev

“An archive is what has been chosen to be left behind and preserved. Something important, valuable, meaningful. Something that explains. The archive the artist proposes to create consists of situational, accidental, unsuccessful shots, and in fact — of invisible fragments of stories in which what matters most often remains barely perceptible, hidden.

The story behind this series of photographs, set to the happy, unobtrusive melody of an iPhone memories video recalling years and lives gone by, is a story of escapes. Personally, I would not call myself someone who runs away; quite the opposite — the brutality of certain experiences initiates a kind of thick-skinnedness, a subconscious desire to improve, to see things through, to save, to give one’s all where it would be better simply to walk away. Here, what flickers is rather an escape from one’s own comfort, or from oneself altogether, as well as the pursuit of the Other.

A second look at escape — the Other’s escape. How do I perceive escape? How do I respond to the Other’s fear, the Other’s indifference? Is this indifference directed specifically at me, or at all of us? What right do I have to respond in synchrony? Is responding to it my responsibility? Is this response directed specifically at the Other, or at all of us? Choosing good over non-good is so human. Choosing present non-good over future good is so human. Abandon the hope of catching up, just as you abandon the hope of escaping.” — Vita Kotyk

The project is realised within the third cycle of “Scattered Communities” and is supported by Insha Osvita and the Asortymentna Kimnata.