Даша Сазановіч «Плюшавыя атамы». Фота: Леся Пчолка
The exhibition “Half-Life: 40 Years After Chernobyl — The Belarusian Experience” has opened at the Uq-Bar-A-Ba space in Berlin.
The artists taking part were born after the Chernobyl disaster. Their lives and artistic experience have been shaped by its long-term consequences. Through installations, video and art objects, Belarusian authors explore how Chernobyl continues to exist in their personal histories and collective memory.
At the core of the curatorial concept is the notion of “half-life” as a metaphor for the prolonged impact of the disaster on memory, bodies and identity.
The video by Yulia Tsvetkova, “Zone of Belonging”, tells the story of the emergence of environmental and political mass movements that arose in response to the catastrophe. Based on shared experiences of exposure, vulnerability and silence, these initiatives became spaces of collective knowledge, resistance and solidarity, shaping the foundations of civil opposition in Belarus.
One of the most significant political events following the Chernobyl disaster during the existence of the BSSR was the emergence of a political demonstration known as “Chernobyl Way”. The action was held in Belarus from 1989 to 2020.
In response to environmental and political violence, grassroots eco-political initiatives emerged across the country. Formed on the basis of everyday experiences of vulnerability, silence and lack of protection, these initiatives became platforms for collective action, alternative knowledge and solidarity, laying the groundwork for opposition and civic movements.
Yulia Tsvetkova, using archival materials, traces the transition from catastrophe and isolation to new forms of community created through shared vulnerability.
The experience of vulnerability and the search for new forms of communication after Chernobyl became unifying for Belarusian society. Almost every family had relatives or acquaintances affected by the disaster, residents of contaminated areas, or liquidators. This shared experience shaped a particular sensitivity to themes of memory, the body and inherited trauma. Artist Kristina Satina addresses this theme through the story of her family. She explores the impact of the disaster on generations by working with family artefacts.
Before her birth, in 1986, her father was sent as a liquidator to the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant during his military service.
One of the key objects of the project is a pocket calendar kept by her mother during her husband’s deployment. Each date is pierced with a needle — a gesture that turns time into absence. These punctures become a metaphor for the invisible penetration of radiation into the body, whose toxicity goes beyond the visible. The artist reinterprets this gesture by transferring it into another material — metal. While for the mother repeated piercing was an act of care, waiting and patience, for the daughter it becomes an expression of anger: she pierces holes in metal to reconnect with her body and emotions.
The 90 days her father spent in the disaster zone were transformed into 90 punctures in metal.
These 90 punctures are an attempt to fix a moment in time and an experience that cannot be fully imagined or directly lived through. In this work, anger emerges not as destruction but as critical energy capable of interrupting the transmission of trauma from generation to generation.
Dasha Sazanovich in the project “Plush Atoms” presents video footage of children arriving in Italy ten years after the disaster and reflects on how the catastrophe affected their childhood, mobility and worldview. In addition to the video, she creates a large, deliberately kitsch plush sculpture resembling an enlarged atom. This refers to toys produced in the Belarusian city of Zhlobin and sold within an informal survival economy. Through this juxtaposition, the catastrophe appears not as a single event of the past, but as a background structure shaping everyday life. Soft, bright, grotesque objects translate the scientific idea of the atom into a tactile, everyday plane, reflecting how trauma embeds itself in the material and emotional fabric of childhood.
Today, the legacy of Chernobyl is emerging in a new context amid the return of the nuclear threat to the political agenda.
The occupation of the Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl nuclear power plants and the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus demonstrate that nuclear energy is once again being used not only as a resource, but also as a tool of political pressure and intimidation.
This situation echoes warnings voiced after the 1986 disaster by Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich, who spoke of the nuclear threat as a long-term reality, not only technological but also political and ethical. These reflections sound just as relevant today as in 1991, when Belarusian monumental artist Aliaksandr Kishchanka presented his tapestry “Chernobyl” to the United Nations in accordance with Resolution 45/190 on international cooperation in dealing with the consequences of the disaster.
Artist Uladzimir Gramovich reinterprets Kishchanka’s image in his work “Offended Angels”. In Gramovich’s version, the angels turn away from the viewer: they no longer address us directly, but seem to become witnesses to the history unfolding before them. This shift places the viewer within the space of catastrophe — not as an observer, but as a participant.
The work also refers to the image of the angel of history created by Walter Benjamin: he is turned toward the past and sees not progress, but an ever-accumulating catastrophe.
Lesya Pcholka presents at the exhibition a project titled “Apocalypse Pillow”, accompanied by a magazine dedicated to mushrooms.
In Belarus, the boundaries between contaminated and “clean” zones remain uncertain. Information about radiation is transmitted informally. The artist’s personal narrative intertwines with collective experiences: childhood memories of forests and mushroom-picking seasons reveal a reality in which the catastrophe has become part of everyday life.
A key element of the project is the radiotrophic fungus Cladosporium sphaerospermum, which was discovered in the Chernobyl zone.
Architect and curator Aksana Hurynovich in her talk, which will take place on April 30 at 19:00, will speak about the radioactive clouds of Chernobyl that united life on the ruins of socialism and capitalism into a new chimerical form of the world.
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster became part of international history and affected the lives of many societies. Russia’s war against Ukraine has once again brought to the forefront the memory of Chernobyl and the issue of safety. Poet and translator Yulia Timafeeva will take part in a discussion titled “40 Years After Chernobyl: From Personal Experience to Collective Memory”, sharing the story of her family, of which the Chernobyl disaster is a part, and presenting the German translation of her book “Circulation”.
The discussion also addressed the transnational aspect of the memory of Chernobyl: how different countries and communities interpret this event, what forms of solidarity have emerged as a result, and whether a common framework for understanding the disaster has been formed.
The exhibition runs until May 15.
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