Autobiography Without Facts
2016–2022
My last living grandfather passed away forty days ago. But I always called him “Dzied” (“grandpa” in Belarusian), and he didn’t mind. I was not a very courteous or amiable granddaughter.
But my grandfather accepted me as I was and did not take offense. He was always an essential part of my life, and it seemed that this would last forever. A constancy that felt immutable.
My grandfather was the only living witness of the Second World War in my family. First, his father, an ordinary Belarusian village man who grazed cows, was accused of being a “Polish spy” and executed by the Soviet authorities in 1938. Then, his two older brothers died, and his sister was burned alive by the German Nazis. His mother, who was taken to Germany during the war, became seriously ill after returning home and did not live long.
My grandfather survived together with his brother, and overall they lived fairly long lives — though rather hard than happy ones. There were too many tragedies and too much trauma. I always underestimated these facts of his biography; they seemed too vague and distant to me, unreal and unimaginable, like myths or legends.
My grandfather’s death almost coincided with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I cannot imagine how he would have perceived the current reality. Perhaps he was fortunate, as he had dementia.
Along with this loss came the realization that the former life had ended forever and irreversibly. The “old world” seems to continue existing somewhere, like a zombie or a vampire. But it is doomed to collapse.
It is obvious that everything will be rebuilt and formed anew. Living through these irreversible transformations and changes is undoubtedly a traumatic and painful experience. It will be a long and inevitable process.
It is obvious that everything will be rebuilt and formed anew. Living through these irreversible transformations and changes is undoubtedly a traumatic and painful experience. It will be a long and inevitable process.
While working on this project, I thought about lost and disappearing connections between people, about how little I know about those around me, and how insufficient this knowledge is. It is fragmentary, incomplete information.
More and more connections are being lost; more and more people are dispersing across the world. Everything seems to be slipping away, and there is no time to grasp it. There is never enough time. To learn, to study carefully, to remember, and to preserve.
More and more connections are being lost; more and more people are dispersing across the world. Everything seems to be slipping away, and there is no time to grasp it. There is never enough time. To learn, to study carefully, to remember, and to preserve.
I also thought about a feeling that has often accompanied me throughout my life — a sense of being lost and unsettled, of searching for my place, of drifting somewhere, as if stuck in a transit zone between the old world and something entirely new, unknown, and inexplicable.
This work is about the fragility of time, the unreliability of memory, and about how our memories are erased — leaving blurred traces, flaring up and disappearing, turning into vague, ghostly, and elusive images.
This work is about the fragility of time, the unreliability of memory, and about how our memories are erased — leaving blurred traces, flaring up and disappearing, turning into vague, ghostly, and elusive images.
Masha Sviatahor / 15.04.2022
When the Sun Is Low—the Shadows Are Long
Curator: Anna Karpenko. Co-curator: Sophia Sadovskaya
Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, Poland
1.04–13.05.2022
Photo: Jan Szewchik
Curator: Anna Karpenko. Co-curator: Sophia Sadovskaya
Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, Poland
1.04–13.05.2022
Photo: Jan Szewchik