Kateryna Lysovenko: Animals / Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk: In absentia

To kick off its 2025 program, Kunstverein Hannover presents two solo exhibitions by outstanding Ukrainian artists.

Kateryna Lysovenko’s largest solo exhibition to date—and the first in German-speaking countries—comprises over 50 works, mainly paintings, under the title Animals. It features artworks created between 2022 and 2025, including the well-known series Mermaids and It’s hard to say what happens with a man, when the land becomes a mother.

In her work, Lysovenko, born in 1989 in Odessa, Ukraine, deals with power structures and ideologies underlying the Soviet past and the omnipresent war in Ukraine. Her figurative works often feature ghostly figures, animals, and hybrid creatures. They could be borrowed from mythology, hail from dreams, or emerge from the depths of memory. The images address trauma and evoke a longing for peace, harmony, and security. 

Like many artists of her generation, Lysovenko experienced Russia’s attack on the young democracy in Ukraine first hand; the waves of the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan are inextricably linked to her development as an artist. For many artists, the years 2014 and 2022 marked decisive turning points, as the means of artistic practice have increasingly become means of political resistance as well as therapeutic tools. 

Lysovenko explores the language of conflict and the comparisons of humans to animals deployed by wartime propaganda in categorial terms,  especially when it comes to acts of violence. It is no coincidence that animal parables are present in many stories and fairy tales, and as in mythology, very few of these are non-violent. 

Kateryna Lysovenko was also selected for the 12th edition of an in-situ project in Hannover’s historical Künstlerhaus buidling, erected in 1856, where she created the wall painting series Angel folding the Sky, inspired by Monique Wittig’s Virgile, non (1994) and Byzantine frescoes. The work will be on display for the full year as part of Stufen zur Kunst, a collaborative project of Stiftung Niedersachsen and Kunstverein Hannover.

In parallel, Kunstverein Hannover presents the first institutional solo exhibition of the artist duo Roman Khimei, born in 1992, and Yarema Malashchuk, born in 1993.

The filmmakers, who have been working together since 2016, have received a great deal of attention in the last two years for a series of short films and installations. Their artistic work often focuses on marginal figures, characters who might be seen as extras against the looming backdrop of the overarching imperialist mythologies. 

Khimei and Malashchuk are part of the artist group Prykarpattian Theatre, which presented the Theater of Hopes and Expectations in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Shortly after the de-occupation of Kherson by the Ukrainian army, Khimei and Malashchuk documented what remained of the Regional Museum of Local Lore after an orchestrated theft of its collection at the orders of Russian authorities. Their work Explosions Near the Museum (2023)—set against the real soundscape backdrop of missile strikes close to the frontlines—explores what is no longer there, addressing the absence of one of the largest and oldest collections of antiquities in southern Ukraine comprising over 173,000 objects, some as much as 7,000 years old. The (missing) exhibits are given new space in the forensic-poetic work via voiceovers and detailed descriptions. 

Also on view is the haunting multi-screen installation You Shouldn’t Have to See This (2024), which premiered at the 2024 Venice Biennale. It features images of  sleeping children who had returned home after being taken by Russians who had weaponized abduction since the invasion. 

Two additional film works from the past three years, The Wanderer (2022) and Additional Scenes (2024) are presented alongside the newly commissioned piece Four Seasons (Winter) (2025). 

Curated by Christoph Platz-Gallus (Director Kunstverein Hannover) with the support of Carlota Gómez (Curator Kunstverein Hannover). 

The exhibitions are made possible through the support of the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, the City of Hannover, and Stiftung Niedersachsen. Kateryna Lysovenko’s exhibition is supported by Krupa Gallery Wrocław, TBA Warszawa, and Voloshyn Gallery Kyiv/Miami. 

Press contact: Nane Anna Bohn, presse@kunstverein-hannover.de