«Black & White Garden»

«When you finally take off your shoes and walk barefoot along the sandy shore…»

On April 5, the exhibition «Black & White Garden» opened — a painting project by artist Vasyl Tkachenko (Liakh).

«Black & White Garden» brought together Vasyl’s paintings and graphic works in a sequence of landscapes that did not necessarily belong to any specific place. In his curatorial text, Sashko Protiah described them as places that «belonged to no one: sand, slag, black soil, chalk, reeds, haze, tumbleweed». Images appeared and disappeared, scrolling past «like a digital scroll», creating a space where sensation preceded recognition.

This was not a landscape in the conventional sense, but rather a state of being: a moment when one’s eyes burned from staring, and the body began to respond — movement emerged, balance became uncertain, as if the viewer had already stepped inside the environment itself. Ultimately, this trajectory led to a «blooming black-and-white garden with a profound crater at its center» — an image in which everyone could discover their own «crater» and its personal meaning.

Vasyl Tkachenko (Liakh) is an artist born in Mariupol who now lives and works in Kyiv. His practice spans painting, drawing, photography, film, and music, with a focus on memory and identity. Before the full-scale invasion, his artistic practice remained largely peripheral. With the outbreak of war, painting became a way for him to process uncertainty and experiences of loss connected to Mariupol and the fate of his family. His works often depict familiar, almost everyday scenes charged with the tension and transformations unfolding around them.

Vasyl Tkachenko’s works are held in the collections of contemporary art museums in Kyiv and Warsaw.

The exhibition was curated by Sashko Protiah — a documentary filmmaker, volunteer from Mariupol, and co-founder of the Freefilmers collective. His work explores themes of memory, othering, and alienation. Since 2022, he has coordinated the multimedia archive Mariupol Memory Park.

The contemporary Ukrainian art platform Spilne Art served as the initiator, art director, and producer of the exhibition.