Ukrainian artists Darya Lukyanenko and Anna Solianyk will present a performance focused on a shared past, ways of activating collective memory, and female archetypes in traditional beliefs of Ukrainian agrarian communities.

Yevshan Zillya is a performative archeology series of Darya Lukyanenko exploring the nomadic shared past and possible ways to activate collective memory. Inspired by the legend from ancient Ukrainian historiography about the child of a Polovtsy Khan, who was separated from his family and raised in Kyiv, so that he forgot his origins. Neither the sound of Polovtsy's song nor his mother tongue reminded him of his roots. But once he smelled a mythical herb called Yevshan Zillya, his memory came back. For Ukrainians, it holds hope to restore the lost heritage after centuries of repression and wars.

Blood and poison dripped onto the bread that “groaned like a human”, for it is sacred project explores female archetypes in traditional Ukrainian culture: the shaman, the witch, the midwife, the fortune-teller, the healer. Anna Solianyk documents and reconstructs in her practice these layers of identity based on my family stories, memories, and rituals. The performance focuses on the living, though marginalized, layers of heritage that have survived despite industrialization and Russification. These figures change with us, shaping new visions of femininity, strength, and knowledge.

Performances are organized as an accompanying program of the exhibition Collective memory is everything I don't remember: Memories that are not our own, taking place from March 6 to April 5, 2026 in the H40 gallery in Holešovice Market in The Chemistry Gallery space.