It was crowded yesterday” is the title of Etchingroom1’s exhibition, a duo consisting of the two Ukrainian artists Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova who founded their printing studio in 2016. Using many techniques such as etching, mosaic or silkscreen, they offer a very meticulous work full of details and humor.
It was crowded yesterday” is the title of Etchingroom1’s exhibition, a duo consisting of the two Ukrainian artists Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova who founded their printing studio in 2016. Using many techniques such as etching, mosaic or silkscreen, they offer a very meticulous work full of details and humor.
The works are inhabited by a permanent dialogue between past, present and future. Etchingroom1 plays on paradoxes and anachronisms by representing ultra-modern or futuristic engines (submarines, flying saucers) through etching, a technique dating back to the Middle Ages and otherwise neglected by recent artistic trends. This relationship to the past is highlighted through the expression of the Ukrainian collective culture and imagination, both strongly impregnated by the imminence of war and by a relentless quest for identity. But Anna and Kristina go far beyond referring to the history of their country, they reappropriate it by giving it a dimension that is not only aesthetic, but also more universal, addressed to all spectators of their art.
Through their exhibition "It was crowded yesterday", Anna and Kristina draw the portrait of Ukrainian and more generally European society in all its diversity. It was crowded yesterday, when millions of Ukrainians gathered onto train platforms to flee the war. It was crowded yesterday, when hundreds of people met at an underground concert in the center of Kyiv despite the war. Let's continue to gather, when it comes to resisting, to standing for Ukraine and celebrating art.
