When Trees Take Care of Crosses
2023–2024
Exhibition view of Displacements and Torrents—Where the Dnipro and the Elbe Meet
Curators: Sasha Baydal and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
9.10.2024–18.01.2025
Photo: Romain Darnaud © ADAGP, Paris
Curators: Sasha Baydal and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
9.10.2024–18.01.2025
Photo: Romain Darnaud © ADAGP, Paris
This series of photographs was taken in Kurapaty in October 2023.
Kurapaty is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk, known as a site of mass burials of Belarusians executed by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) between 1937 and 1941.
People were shot without trial or sentence and thrown into deep pits dug in advance directly in the forest. In the 1930s, it was an ideal location for the Soviet authorities to carry out mass executions without unnecessary witnesses and to bury bodies underground in large numbers.
The total number of victims remains unknown. According to some estimates, it may exceed 250,000 people.
Kurapaty is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk, known as a site of mass burials of Belarusians executed by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) between 1937 and 1941.
People were shot without trial or sentence and thrown into deep pits dug in advance directly in the forest. In the 1930s, it was an ideal location for the Soviet authorities to carry out mass executions without unnecessary witnesses and to bury bodies underground in large numbers.
The total number of victims remains unknown. According to some estimates, it may exceed 250,000 people.
Since most of the murdered have never been identified, the crosses installed by Belarusian activists in memory of the victims of Stalinist repression are nameless.
Many of the wooden crosses are now in miserable condition. While photographing them, I noticed that some of the broken and uprooted crosses were prevented from falling by nearby pine trees.
For me, this became a gesture of solidarity, care, and support by natural forces in the context of extremely brutal state violence and repression in today’s Belarus, where the regime is trying by all means to depoliticize Kurapaty, strip it of its historical significance, and establish full control over public space, history, and memory.
Many of the wooden crosses are now in miserable condition. While photographing them, I noticed that some of the broken and uprooted crosses were prevented from falling by nearby pine trees.
For me, this became a gesture of solidarity, care, and support by natural forces in the context of extremely brutal state violence and repression in today’s Belarus, where the regime is trying by all means to depoliticize Kurapaty, strip it of its historical significance, and establish full control over public space, history, and memory.