2025
video installation, mural, objects, sound, 5’52’’
The multimedia project Reposition explores the fragility of human agency in times of war and warns of the emergence of authoritarian tendencies within democratic societies. Monumental monochrome murals depict children and adolescents engaged in everyday activities — playing, studying, doing household chores, and socializing. These figures become multilayered allegories of a complex past, a traumatic present, and an uncertain future. They represent at once direct victims of war, the politically infantilized citizens who willingly surrender their agency under a “strong hand” of authority, and representatives of the younger generation who, despite everything, embody hope for a better tomorrow. Shumska deliberately doesn’t show individual facial features, universalizing the figures while consciously referencing Kazymyr Malevych’s Suprematist strategy.
Onto the murals is projected a video montage composed of news footage, fields of colour, and documentary evidence of war. The visual part is accompanied by a soundscape consisting of interwoven news reports on the International Criminal Court’s actions concerning russian war crimes, with monologues by children from Ukraine with experience of forced displacement. Across the murals alongside the children’s figures and documentary material are projected animated collages incorporating fragments of imperial culture. The figures of a pioneer, Lenin, and Dostoevsky, along with fairytale imagery, ironically contrast with the documentary truth that exposes the logic of colonialism. Through the juxtaposition of document and fiction, the project invites viewers to reflect on their own privileged position as observers and engage in the political process as active citizens. Reposition functions as a temporary monument and manifesto — an instrument for decolonizing knowledge, overcoming fear, and encouraging reflection on one’s own role in the face of events beyond one’s control.
Created in cooperation with PGS Sopot, CSW ŁAŹNIA and the Kolonia Teraz Artists Foundation.
Special thanks to Svitlana Shumska.
The work includes audio recordings of children from Ukraine and Poland. Participants: Danylo, Nastia, Ignacy, Ania, Malwina, Liova, Agata, Bohdana, Gosia, Ewa, Mira, Taja, Yulia, Dima, Sonia.
Background music: Botanica – Forgotten Orchard, from the album The Quiet Path (2025).
Courtesy of the artist.
Presentations: 2025 – Between the (Un)imaginable and the Real, CSW Łaźnia, Gdańsk, Poland