Waiting Room

Realized: 2023, How River Roars, Krupa Art Foundation, Wrocław, Poland

architectural model, artificial stone (сorian), metal, wood, size 1600 mm x 1658 mm x 808 mm, 80 analogue slides (35mm)

Open Group – Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga

The new work by the Open Group directs attention to the peculiar limbo state of people, both as individuals and as a nation, which is one of the damaging consequences of the war. The work is based on the specific relation emerging when a person is considered missing. This tragic situation, now caused on a mass scale by the war waged by Russia against Ukraine, puts the close ones of the missing person in a state of fearful waiting. The projected texts represent an anonymous selection from a vast and evergrowing list of descriptions of circumstances of a person gone missing, as they were published on a particular Telegram channel. 

The artists chose to work with the metaphor of a train station, a place of personal waiting but also of a universal experience. The unique feature of a station is a large area dedicated to waiting. The one recreated in the model is now destroyed. Located in the city of Mariupol, it had a distinctive socialist-modernist design and housed a large-scale mosaic dedicated to the industry and steelworkers – a hopeful prospect for a bright future. 

The Waiting Room is the artists’ attempt to commemorate the suffering caused by this mass-missing of people. It is also a voice in the discussion on the social and artistic means of remembering and building monuments. 

Text by –  Oleksandra Pogrebnyak, Antoni Burzyńki 

Accurate translation of the slide: A former military officer, when the rashists occupied the city of Mariupol, he was taken away by the army. I do not know where he was taken to. I know that he did not have his phone or documents with him. There was no news from him for almost a year. Pavlo, 18/07/2023, Mariupol 

Accurate translation of the slide: Shelling. He was wounded, Bannyi alley 4. Taken by the army to hospital from a nearby basement. Ihor, 22/08/2023, Mariupol 

Photo by Alicja Kielan 

The work is made of Corian® DuPontTM kindly provided by CCI sp. z o.o.