Alevtina Kakhidze. Seeds of Ukraine, 2020. Happening
Description
Alevtina Kakhidze began the project Seeds of Ukraine on February 25, 2020, with a performance at the National Center of Folk Culture Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv. She asked people to bring seed packets, which she would then take closer to the front line or “zero line,” in exchange for requests for items from the occupied territories. At some point, seed-producing and selling enterprises in the occupied areas stopped operating, and local residents started ordering seeds from the other side of the line. Kakhidze compiled a list of these requests, which included dreams and daily life stories, a list of grievances toward Ukraine, a smile, recipes, a piece of land, Novorossiya cigarettes, and more. According to the artist, this allowed her to maintain a connection to her occupied home after her mother passed away while crossing a checkpoint in the non-government-controlled territory.
After the performance at the Honchar Museum, the artist built a special mobile kiosk to transport the seeds with labels showing the associated request as a price, and went “to zero line” to Stanytsia Luhanska to carry out the direct exchange.
- Seeds of Ukraine, 2020 [Video] / Alevtina Kakhidze. YouTube. March 26, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkkmvTOmWbA
