Vorzel’s Uvarov House. Photo by Yulia Stakhivska, used with permission.

Written by Yulia Stakhivska

Translated from Ukrainian by Iryna Tiper and Filip Noubel 

This story is part of a series of essays written by Ukrainian artists entitled “Regained Culture: Ukrainian voices curate Ukrainian culture.” This series is produced in collaboration with the Folkowisko Association/Rozstaje.art, thanks to co-financing by the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia through a grant by the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe. 

Initially, it was just someone’s apartment. Then, it became a restaurant, later, a bakery, and, the other day, a bookstore opened there. The “Ye” bookstore is a large chain of bookstores across Ukraine that has created quite a buzz. I feel nostalgic because, in my first job, I had a business card that labeled me as “art manager.” This was at the first bookstore of that same chain in Kyiv, near the Golden Gate.

What book should I pick in this new bookstore? The place of the mass burial of victims of Russian crimes in Bucha is not far from here. And I remember Martin Pollack’s “Poisoned Landscapes,” a collection of essays that show how deceptive landscapes can be, and which, like grass that manages to grow again, tell stories about Auschwitz, Katyn, Babyn Yar … The war continues, on memorial signs bearing the names of the dead. I am looking for images of healing herbs that can “heal” the landscape. 

I will tell you about the towns west of Kyiv that became world-famous in 2022 as a result of the tragedy of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Vorzel: places that have a history and artistic traditions, and are not just “crippled landscapes.” 

A photo from the park 

When I look at the painting “The Annunciation” (1909) by Ukrainian impressionist artist Oleksandr Murashko, I notice the wooden veranda of the old country estate and remember his uncle, Mykola Murashko, the founder of the Kyiv School of Drawing, who lived and was buried in Bucha. Witold Kaminsky, a hydropath of Polish origin, lived just nearby. His house and the former hydrotherapy clinic in Kyiv, on Saksaganskoho Street, where Kaminsky practiced, have all been preserved.

Here is a video about the painting:

The artistic Murashko family was friends with other summer residents, such as the Bulgakov family, particularly with Mikhail Bulgakov, the future Russian writer. What contrasting views and futures they had! Pro-Russian Bulgakov set off from the Kyiv region on a journey that ended in Moscow, while Oleksandr Murashko was killed in 1919 in Kyiv, during the Bolshevik invasion, when Ukraine once again defended its sovereignty. Again, a fragment of the past, but memory brings back to us what matters most: wonderful paintings by artists. As the Latin motto claims: vita brevis, ars longa.

I like to check out exhibitions at the Kosenko Art Gallery, near Buchansky Park. The last one was somewhat neo-impressionist, with idyllic landscapes. An attempt to disguise the war? A distraction from it? No, just the simultaneity of different times: there will be no other life but this one, so why give up the exhibition? We live on, including at times of air raids or, above all, in times like these. Our landscapes need healing herbs to console us.

This is the entry point into what matters the most in my city of Bucha: the park. A combination of landscapes shaped by the traditions of French and English parks, canals, ponds with ducks, flowers, old trees, attractions, picnics, concerts (such as the annual International Operetta Festival O-Fest in early June). I have written more than one text on the terrace of the small restaurant there, a place where one takes one’s first steps, lies on the grass, swims or rides a bike.

For locals and visitors alike, this is a place of strength. The trace of shell fragments on the embankment should not change this. On the contrary, people have returned, and while they live in danger, they find strength in what inspires them. This is not some advice from a life coach about resilience; this is a practice that can become a memory — a vivid, bright memory, tagged #BuchaDream, filled with summer light and children’s laughter in the shade of an old oak tree. There is a sculpture under that tree, a kind of “Spirit of the Park,” whose facial features resemble a well-known local sculptor.

Of course, one perceives everything differently now. The sign “Demined. XOXO.” left by Ukrainian sappers on the fence touches me and fills me with human warmth. It might, on the contrary, make others feel uncomfortable. Some residents of Bucha did not return because of this emotional conundrum. Others, for practical reasons. This is the case of my friends, poets and translators Daryna Gladun and Lesyk Panasiuk, who no longer physically live in their apartment; it was occupied and destroyed by Russian soldiers. But they have “lived in” it again through their texts and an art installation.

Graphic stories

There is much on my personal art map that speaks about culture today. For example, the short story “Extraterrestrial Woman” by Oksana Zabuzhko, a famous Ukrainian writer, which she wrote at the Irpin House of Writers. Or the Soviet institution of the “House of Creativity,” back then a space for writers and translators, now a literary myth revisited by contemporary artists. Maryna Hrymych created a series of novels that show, in particular, the Irpin literary circle. Now, near the abandoned writers’ buildings [Soviet institutions where writers could work and live], there is a park, with thematic sculptures and alleys strewn with rubble, which will inevitably lead to Chokolov’s Dacha — a building from the early 20th century, owned by Kyiv entrepreneur Ivan Chokolov. The Soviet authorities nationalized it and, in 1936, transferred it to the Writers’ Union, an institution gathering all prominent Soviet writers and providing financial and other support. Some of the older authors still live there from time to time. 

Various characters taken from books “walk” the streets of Irpin. One of the most likeable is the spirit of the Irpin forest, Ommm, the hero of Tasha Torba’s books. He strives with all his might to heal the city’s wounds, helping people and animals. He can be found in the “Forest Bookstore” in Irpin’s Central Park or in the art space “Lisova, 3.”

The space was founded by designer Svitlana Hryb and film director Serhiy Spizhovyi. They upcycle objects to create wonderful chandeliers, installations, and mosaics from tile fragments. They were among the first in Irpin to provide psychological support workshops for displaced persons and residents of the Kyiv region. An artistic community was formed here, with events and meetings, such as the “Irpin. Graphic Stories” exhibition of students from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, who were introduced to the city in the summer of 2024, and then created their own stories about the place. The ones who suffered the most in Bucha are the people; there are indeed few ruins, as the Russians did not occupy the city entirely. But fierce fighting took place, damaging many houses. In one of them, the English artist Banksy drew a gymnast balancing over a bomb crater.

The unbearable lightness of the dacha 

Vorzel’s Uvarov House. Photo by Yulia Stakhivska, used with permission.

In Vorzel, the former resort spirit has been best preserved. I say “the former” because most of the dachas featured in the sepia postcards of the last century have become sadly abandoned Soviet sanatoriums or have been rebuilt beyond recognition. But one of them was lucky, and twice at that, as it survived into the year 2022. This house is the estate of Natalia Tereshchenko, who came from a family of Ukrainian patrons of the arts. The estate is called the Uvarov House, because Natalia was the wife of Count Uvarov. This beautifully restored house with a spire now hosts a museum that includes an exhibition about the Tereshchenko family, a room showcasing the old dacha life, a classroom (there was a school in the building in the 1920s), and a modest exhibition dedicated to the writer Valerian Pidmohylny, a stalwart of 20th century Ukrainian literature who died during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. He left his mark in Ukrainian history with his psychological and urban prose, primarily the novel “The City” (1928). 

The museum also displays a concert hall dedicated to Borys Lyatoshynsky, a representative of modernism in Ukrainian music. Some of his students include avant-garde composers Leonid Hrabovsky and Valentin Silvestrov. In Vorzel, there was a House for Composers with a dedicated space for them, and Lyatoshynsky often worked at the Vorzel dacha.

The house of composer Igor Poklad stands as an echo of Vorzel’s musical tradition. On November 7, 2024, the film “Bucha,” based on real events, was released in Ukrainian cinemas (it had its world premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival). One of the key scenes was filmed in this house. Russian officers break into the dacha and put on a record playing music from a cartoon about Ukrainian Cossacks. Then one of them sits down at the piano and tries to play the music, but the commander regrets that they let a composer go into evacuation. After all, according to Russian narratives, there are not supposed to be any Ukrainian composers, or any Ukrainians in general. The subordinate eagerly asks his senior to play, and he plays the Russian composer Tchaikovsky; it all ends with a toast to Russian culture. Retreating, the Russians leave a grenade in the piano. This is not a cinematic trick. Some residents have indeed found such “souvenirs” inside pianos in their liberated homes. 

Now Vorzel also tries to live “as before,” people go to visit the museum, at the tulip tree, at the hotel by the lake, or at the Workit co-working space. On a summer evening, Vorzel sounds to me like a nocturne inspired by pine trees, with a hint of tangy bitterness. 

The power of dreams

Even when I didn’t live in Bucha, I knew that nearby in Hostomel, there was an airport hosting the world’s largest cargo plane with the cute name “Mriya,” which means “dream” in Ukrainian. About Hostomel itself, I only knew that it was the oldest city in the region, founded in the 15th century, and that there was an old wooden church there. This is also where the military town near the airport suffered the most in 2022 in fierce battles.

The Mriya plane [the world's largest plane, stationed in Ukraine, and destroyed in 2022 during Russia’s full-scale invasion] flies over the Giardini gardens, but does not cast a shadow. It is not known what will happen in Giardini that day, and fortunately no one knows this.

This is a fragment of the project description by the Open Group art association, which represented Ukraine at the 2019 Venice Biennale. For some reason, “Mriya” never flew over the canals of Venice. Now the plane truly lives on in the world of the imagination. Several art books featuring paintings of the plane have been written about it.

Literature can give at least some sense of duration. Because when you leave home with only one backpack, what is left but history? This was reflected in the activity of Kyiv restaurateur Margarita Sichkar, who is also a book fan. She lives in Hostomel, has built two houses there, and decided to support the town. So she opened a book space called BookHub “Vich/na/Vich” in the “Schaslyvy” (happy) park, a place that unites and inspires people.

In this bright bookstore, presentations and meetings take place over coffee among tall pine trees. The initiator of the hub likes to repeat: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” It’s hard not to agree. And on the lawns of Schaslyvy Park, among the grass, the healing herbs do grow.