Motherland. Country. Rodina
“Motherland” in three languages: English, French, Russian…
Motherland. Country. Rodina. At the etymological level, we realize that we do not share the same notion. The first comes from the word “mother”, the second – from “father”, and the third from 'to be born', 'gender', 'lineage', 'family'. Language immediately provides a key to perception of the space, the country and the place that an individual occupies there. In Russia, it is the fraction of a group, the piece of an area.
“Rodina… It’s a propaganda word for me… Manipulation by feelings,” says Danila Tkachenko. “That word also makes me think of condemnation. Because Rodina is something heavy, which shapes you, directs you and condemns you if you have not followed the party line. »
Danila was operating in a strange country: rich in history but a country that has lost its memory. Danila Tkachenko has been working on memory for over 15 years. The memory of a country and a people who live there: Russia.
Memory is a curious thing. Sometimes, it helps us, guides us... It links the elements, offers solutions and answers. Sometimes it bends, handicaps us, hinders us, places us on the wrong path and can put us in danger.
What about at the family level? From a village? of an ethnicity? Of a country ? Inability to connect the dots, learn from mistakes, move forward? Paradoxically, “forgetting” can have a therapeutic function. But forgetting without treating the consequences of a trauma, without turning the page in peace, is dangerous, even criminal.
Each series is a long-term project that requires research, preparation, resources and time. Danila creates epic, grandiose paintings that cover immense geographic areas and always in places that are difficult to access.
Each project is an impossible mission where he risks his life…. Places guarded by the military... Places that he enters at the risk of criminal sanctions, prohibited areas with prohibited speech.
He deliberately set fire to abandoned houses ("Motherland" series), entered contaminated territories ("Acid" series), he made installations in churches, untouchable places, even in ruins (“Monuments” series), he worked with human bones ("Heroes" series), and today he is in the ultimate artistic transgression: wanted by the FSB for a work, an aborted creation on Red Square.
For years, in his photographic series produced in Russia, Danila Tkachenko has tried to show, describe and make people understand this immense country. He explains that in the West, everything around us is perceived as an image, as an object; that Westerners pay attention to details, to nuances, to each other. In Russia, on the contrary, we see everything through a text, literature: inhabiting an immense territory, the Russian looks far away, but does not see the details and the individual does not matter.
According to Danila, photography "structures space", his images are those details that an average Russian will not see, and which he will assemble to construct the most accurate overall representation... and often less pleasant.
“I do anthropological research using visuals. I would say I do social sculpture”
Looking at his works, we realize to what extent Danila has managed to integrate so many things, notions and fictions present in each of his images, to the point that words become useless. Each image, each series is dense with meaning, historical layers, open questions. Like every Russian, Danila Tkachenko contains within himself the burden of family stories (told or hidden), the weight of distant and current events, the invisible but strong links of generations under state pressure.
And today, according to Danila, as in 1917, Russia wants the whole world to become Rodina! Let this entropy spread throughout the planet.
She is dangerous, this Rodina...
Do you feel its icy, unforgiving breath?
