“Muted Explosions”, Roman Khimei y Yarema Malashchuk

The exhibition Muted Explosions presents, for the first time in Catalonia, the work of Ukrainian artists and filmmakers Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk. The exhibition will showcase three recent film pieces: Explosions Near a Museum (2023), Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II (2019), and Dedicated To The Youth Of The World III (2023). These pieces are united by the theme of absence and resistance, the coexistence of silence and noise, and the contrast between uncertainty and collective determination.

The dual projection of Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II and III immerses us in the unique chronological context of Ukraine, progressively invaded and then openly at war. The second version of the film is a recreation of the first, produced under the same title in 2019. Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II documented the rave Cxema in Kyiv. The origins of Cxema are closely tied to the unrest that developed gradually over the past decade, following the Maidan uprising, leading to the current stage of war across the country. Although originally commissioned by the Cxema festival, its nine minutes transcend the notion of documenting a rave. The film now stands as an iconic document of Ukraine’s artistic vitality while already under attack, as well as a collective portrait of a damaged and resilient youth. The film was shot in the large pavilion of the Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv, which was transformed into a massive rave zone for the occasion. The camera closely followed the participants in the new day—a reality that many seemed unable to accept. Just a few seconds are enough to immortalize a stance, a gaze, encoding a certain timelessness in the gesture. The models’ bodies are as they appear: contemplative, exhausted, slightly bewildered, slightly mystical, with faces sensually close to a degree of zero emotion. They emerge from an existential otherness, not from the party itself, but from a composition of time and place, of bodily endurance, and the functioning of the space—a specific technical conditioning that brings forms of becoming and the affectation of attention to her/them. Ravers leaving the factory. Dedicated To The Youth Of The World III, by contrast, was created in a completely different context. The artists decided to recreate the rave in September 2023 under constant threat, focusing on the members of the community who replaced the previous rave participants after a prolonged pandemic and a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The work Explosions Near the Museum (2023) documents the looting of the Kherson Museum of Local Tradition by Russian occupiers in October 2022. With over 173,000 items ranging from Scythian gold to World War II weapons, the museum was strategically looted by Russian occupying forces two weeks before Kherson’s liberation by Ukrainians. The sounds of bombing and rocket attacks were recorded during filming at the museum on December 12, less than two kilometers from Russian-occupied territory. Empty display cases and pedestals reflect not only physical loss but also cultural amnesia. The footage of the scene depicts a temporary numbness in the face of loss. However, replacing the numbness, a voiceover reads a detailed description of the stolen artifacts according to the museum catalog. The voice emphasizes either the hope that the museum’s collection will soon return to its former state or a denial of the reality in which the looting took place.