On December 13 and 14, the Odesa National Art Museum will host two performances created under the Antonin Artaud Fellowship. The works explore life in Budzhak and the return of the Azov Sea landscapes.
On December 13, from 11:00 to 19:00, the museum will present a performance by Heorhiy Hoghatadze. His work, My Friend From Nowhereland, centers on the correspondence between two young men—from Budzhak (southern Odessa region) and Balochistan (a historical region on the northern shore of the Indian Ocean, formerly a separate country, now divided among three states).
“I and my friend Sayyaf met online and saw a mirror in each other: different cultures, but shared feelings. Our landscapes are two ‘borderlands.’ The merging of our voices and memories creates Nowhereland—a fictional shared space between two realities,” Hoghatadze explains.
The performance explores the commonalities of two parallel experiences: life on the periphery, the search for identity within a religious context, and isolation where the internet is the only channel of communication. My Friend From Nowhereland is participatory and changes depending on audience involvement.
The theme of shared experiences across distance is also explored in the performance Naval Battle by Oleksiy Minko and Volodymyr Prylutskyi, which will be shown at the museum on December 14 at 17:00. The artists come from—or often visited—the currently occupied city of Berdiansk on the Azov Sea. In Odessa, on the Black Sea coast, they occasionally glimpse a mirage of their hometown. Through photography, play, and conversation, Minko and Prylutskyi attempt to approach the city obscured by the fog of war, reconstruct its complex context, and reach its mirage.
To reclaim the Azov Sea landscape, Oleksiy and Volodymyr surround themselves not only with vast waters but also with conflicting political mirages and historical debates embedded in it.
Both performances, united by the theme of the South, reflect closeness across distance, mirages as a means of survival, and imaginary spaces emerging where real territories are inaccessible.
