Artist
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Viktoriia Tymonova
We want to know the truth
It is true that at least once in your lifetime you have heard about ball lightning. But can you be sure that it exists? No, because it has never been proven.
Official sources say that contacts with ball lightning have been recorded since the Middle Ages and even earlier. But they immediately deny their existence, referring to paid scientists, stupid physicists and even doctors. "They" are trying to tell us that ball lightnings, or more correctly, controlled energy balls, are hallucinations, delusions of vision, and nonsense... But this is manipulation, outright lies.
In reality, the available facts and evidence confirm that the existence of controlled energy balls is not a joke. Thousands of eyewitnesses and victims speak for themselves. But the truth is that the history of controlled energy balls begins in 1951. In the same year, the body of a journalist who died under mysterious circumstances was found in the city of Helbshire. Why would you pay attention to the mysterious death of an ordinary person?
It was later revealed that it was this journalist, John Foster, who prepared the material about the secret laboratory in Helbshire a few weeks earlier. His article says that this mysterious place is developing special weapons in the form of controlled energy balls. He writes that these balls will be able to control the birth rate and adversely affect young children. This information is alarming. But even more frightening is the fact that after 1951 none of the open sources of any country in the world provided any information, references or data about the city of Helbshire. Perhaps something is really being hidden from us? The nephew of the murdered journalist, Greg Foster, decided to get to the truth. He holds secret documents, materials, eyewitness accounts and real facts at his disposal. All the documents available to us at the moment are written in a secret cipher that is unlike any existing language. For many years, Greg has been deciphering these materials. Numerous eyewitnesses who met objects similar to these balls complain of fever, headache and sudden bruises on their stomachs. Usually a few days after the tragedy, the victims are informed of infertility. How long will "they" continue to hide the truth from us?
Wake up.
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Conspiracies are an attempt to understand, to explain the complex and incomprehensible. In my project I'm trying to combine different aspects of conspiracy theories to find ideas that manipulate basic human fears. Absolutely everything in my project is fictional. In this way I explore my personal attitude towards conspiracy theories and even my childhood. Belief in ball lightning is very common among Ukrainians. When it rains, I always close the windows, fearing that ball lightning will fly into my house. Also, my project is a commentary on the future that awaits us. In times of uncertainty, conspiracy theories will go on and on.
I witnessed her transforming rain
Witchcraft has always been a huge part of Ukrainian culture and everyday life. One of the first works of fiction prose written in Ukrainian was a text about a witch from Konotop (a city in Sumy Oblast), written in 1833 by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko.
After the full-scale invasion started there, also in Konotop, but already in 2022, in one of the videos from the first days of the war, an unarmed civilian woman shouts to the Russian occupants on tanks: "Do you in fact know where you are? This is Konotop! Here every second woman is a witch!"
For me, witchcraft is a way of gaining power, confidence, control and authority. But it is also a field of fear and anxiety, excitement and worry. My fears and anxieties about magic, as well as memories of magical rituals and situations that have surrounded me throughout my life, have led me to this series. The fact that magic and witchcraft in Ukraine is not a rediscovered phenomenon, but rather a long linear process that has never ended has always fascinated me.
I'm not trying to fight my fear radically. I like the sneak peek and coquetry aspect. But also, for me, this project is about re-evaluating and reconstructing what has been lost. My work with this project by far included working with ethnographical texts and documents, stories from my family, reconstructions and reenactments of witch trials, working with different materials such as clay, wax, glass, dough and herbs.
Observing oneself, one's identity, and asking existential questions—this often happens in moments of searching, doubting, or in situations filled with pain and difficult introspection, which are key for many artists. A prominent theme in Dorota Franková's work States is gender and queer identity, as well as psychological states, which run through her pieces. Her self-portraits capture moments of emotional tension as she explores the transformations of the mind, moods, and the states between them. Her experiences in psychiatric clinics or working in a hospice, where she daily encountered death, are reflected in her work with extraordinary intensity—sometimes expressively, sometimes in quiet hints. As if one could not be separated from the other, as if all her experiences complemented each other and, in the end, formed one fascinating whole.
Varvara Gorbunova, in her series On Womanhood, gives us a glimpse into the intimate space of her own family and its female members. The cycle On Womanhood is a sensitive probe into moments and relationships in the context of shared free time, and household chores, but also the fragility of the moment, bodily closeness, and subtle references to spiritual life. In the project Coming Home, she also follows her personal experience related to that strange feeling of returning home after a long time. From the photographs, it is clear that this is a delicate and personal topic, set in a kind of nostalgic summer atmosphere, yet tinged with a certain sense of poignancy.
The surfaces of things can captivate us with their diversity—they are fascinating by their structure and the complexity of the relationships they create. But what do they reveal about what lies beneath them? Can we find hidden patterns in their arrangement, or do they only captivate us with their aesthetic value? Does their structure carry a message about the content they conceal, or does it stand alone as an autonomous layer of meaning? Lukáš Opekar, through his experience in graphic design and image generation, approaches these questions with a distinctive creative freedom. His innovative approach, transcending genre and boundaries between different media, opens up space for exploring intersections between different fields, offering a unique view of the relationship between surface and content. In the series Imprint, he examines new angles on seemingly mundane details through technologies that allow us to view the surfaces of things differently. His images, primarily composed of 360° panoramic views of tree trunks, reveal natural structures in a new light. The resulting shots uncover the micro-landscapes of these weathered surfaces and bring an unexpected aesthetic—a unique reflection of the passage of time and the variability of space. On the other hand, the project Blue Hideouts is a documentary series of images strictly focused on the use of construction tarps with their typically striking blue color, which captures attention in the public space. Originally practical, their use becomes, through the artist’s perspective, an image deeply embedded in the aesthetics of the environment.
Archives, whether family, institutional, or online content, hold many perspectives and possibilities. A glimpse into their selected fragments prompts us to reflect on the relationship between the external and internal, structure and content, and finally between the real and the imaginary. Viktoriia Tymonova is a talented artist captivated by the belief in supernatural phenomena. Through her journalistic practice and study of Ukrainian historical sources, she has long deepened her knowledge in this area, which she transforms into photographs and inventive installations. Her work I Witnessed Her Transforming Rain draws on ethnographic texts, family stories, witch trial reconstructions, and experiments with materials such as clay, wax, glass, and herbs. The project focuses on re-evaluating and recreating forgotten traditions that form an uninterrupted line of witchcraft in Ukrainian culture up to the present day. The artist draws inspiration for her project from her fascination with this theme, which she sees as a source of power, confidence, and control, but also as a field of fear, anxiety, and excitement. In her project We Want to Know the Truth, she investigates mysterious phenomena associated with the myth of ball lightning. The purpose of her work is to play with the absurdity of these stories, which connect unexplained phenomena with secret laboratories, classified technologies, and mysterious deaths.
All of these projects unsettle us, force us to doubt, and search for hidden meaning where at first glance not everything is immediately obvious. Art here is not just about depicting the world, but about deciphering it, discovering invisible layers, and opening up space for uncertainties that challenge us to reconsider our ideas about reality.
Markéta Kinterová
The internal expert committee consists of Markéta Kinterová, Světlana Malina and Barbora Vanická Čápová.