Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei

You Shouldn’t Have to See This, 2024 

Six-channel video installation, LED screens, dimensions variable, no sound.

The silence of the video installation You Shouldn’t Have to See This emphasizes the blissful yet fragile moment of empathy brought about by the sight of sleeping children. At the same time, this act of observing triggers a feeling of unease. Khimei and Malashchuk filmed Ukrainian children who had been forcibly taken into Russian territory and later returned to Ukraine. The estimated numbers of those abductions range from 20,000 to over a million cases since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014. While drawing attention to this heinous war crime, the artists offer a compelling account of childhood during the ongoing war.

By deliberately violating the boundaries of privacy, crossing the line between the loving gaze and voyeurism, Khimei and Malashchuk question the production of war images and examine their inherent conflict of representation: each such image is first and foremost evidence of a crime and only then and only potentially a work of art (one that should never have been created). The act of observing can lead to a false sense of involvement or to a feeling of relief that arises from the aesthetic qualities of the images. Nonetheless, authentic images and their existence in the public sphere serve as testimonies with genuine political impact.