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VASA Front Page Exhibition #55
VASA Front Page Exhibitions presents the work of emerging and established photographers, video or sound artists.
Alena Grom
"The Womb "
© Alena Grom
The Womb is a story of life in spite of death, war and violence.
Curator: Igor Manko
Alena Grom was born in Donetsk Ukraine, where she lived until 2014. In January that year she ran a housewarming party in her long awaited newly-built house. In April 2014, when the separatist coup began, she had to abandon it and flee to a refuge in Kyiv. Later her house, left unattended, was robbed by marauders, there were shootings and pools of blood inside it.
The artist keeps returning to the frontline territory in Donbas to make her photoprojects. Photography has become a therapy to help overcome the traumatic reality.
"Since the beginning of the war, many mines have closed. Makeshift coal mines (“pits”, places of illegal coal mining) have turned into hideaways and bomb shelters. People have gone down into the mines once again, this time in order to be safe.
Grom created The Womb project in 2018 on the front-line territory of Donbas. The images tell stories of the women who decided to give birth to a child while living in a war zone. The artist’s models are both mothers and children of war, some of the latter more than four years old by now. The shelters are where these children spent their weekdays, where they learned to walk and talk, where they had their first life experiences for all four years of war. The womb is a story of life in spite of death, war and violence.
Alena Grom perceives the territory of Donbas as a living organism, so she builds her work on a medical metaphor. Soil and shelters are paralleled to an ultrasound pregnancy test. Residents of mining towns are an intrauterine fetus that develops and lives a full life, but in full dependence on its mother.” (From Katerina Yakovlenko’s essay)
© Alena Grom