An earlier version of this text was published in Ukrainian, see: “південь виснаження,” Past / Future / Art, July 17, 2023, ➝.
“Holodomor Memorial in Melitopol,” Past / Future / Art, ➝.
The invited expert council of the competition featured Iryna Miroshnykova and Oleksii Petrov of FORMA, Kateryna Semenyuk, Nazar Bilyk, and Lizaveta German.
Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
"Postmemory" is a concept developed by American researcher Marianne Hirsch to denote the kind of collective ideas about the past that are formed by the second generation after a catastrophic experience, at the "break" of collective memory. See Hirsch’s The Generation of Postmemory Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York” Columbia university Press, 2012).
It is important to point out that this community is multicultural: both in the past and today Melitopol has been home to many ethnic groups—Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Jews, Germans, Russians, and others—who coexisted peacefully and suffered equally during the Holodomor.
