The exhibition Journey / Traces of Stories begins: Children fleeing the war in Ukraine share their fates
They had only a few minutes to pack their essentials and leave their homes. The exhibition Journey / Traces of Stories, which opens on January 21, 2025, at 6:00 PM at the Artivist Lab in Kampus Hybernská, shares the stories of Ukrainian children fleeing the war through 26 pairs of authentic shoes and audio recordings. This unique exhibition, which aims primarily to bring the fates of Ukrainian refugee children closer to the Czech public, is organized by the Slovo 21 association and curator Tamara Moyzes.
"The exhibition, created by an interdisciplinary collective, brings together Czech and Ukrainian artists from the fields of visual art, literature, and sound design to, through an audiovisual installation, convey the stories of Ukrainian children," explains exhibition curator Tamara Moyzes.
The central motif of the exhibition is 26 pairs of shoes, in which the children arrived in the Czech Republic. Each pair is accompanied by text or audio featuring authentic recordings of the children's narratives. The children's shoes symbolize the journey to a new home and serve as a reminder of the hardships and challenges that the children and their families had to face. The exhibition also includes a short film:
"Its creators, Ukrainian UMPRUM students Anna Solianyk and Iryna Babanina, brought their personal experiences of leaving home and adapting to a foreign environment to the project," adds Tamara Moyzes.
The exhibition will be open to the public at the Prague Artivist Lab from January 22 to March 20, 2025, every Monday and Wednesday from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Admission is free. Kampus Hybernská will not be the only place where the Journey / Traces of Stories exhibition will appear in 2025. It will travel to Zlín and Brno during the spring and summer, and in the autumn, the exhibition will conclude its own journey in Teplice, with a different curator preparing the exhibition in each city.
The exhibition is part of a project by the organization Slovo 21 titled We Are Not Strangers, which aims to bring foreigners and the majority society closer together through objective and impartial information.
"It is incredibly important to us that Czech society has the opportunity to learn what refugees are like, how they live here, and what connects us. It will then be much easier to bridge the gap filled with stereotypes that arises precisely because we do not know each other," explains Jelena Silajdžić, Director of Slovo 21.
The exhibition is co-funded by the European Union through the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and by the City of Prague.
Contact person:
Marie-Anna Růžičková
732 268 201
marie.ruzickova@slovo21.cz
