Female artists from the German-Ukrainian Center Rostock e.V. are presenting a large-scale art project as part of Kunst HEUTE MV 26 October 10, 2026 Exhibition and Reading | 2:00–8:00 p.m.
What We Don't Say – Stories That Live Under the Skin
Artists from the German-Ukrainian Center Rostock e.V.
Olha Cheremushkina – Body Art
Lesia Ivanenko – Photography
Oleksandra Yakymenko, Vira Momot, Lesia Ivanenko, Tetiana Didur, Everest Girard – Literary Texts
What We Don’t Say
Stories That Live Under the Skin
The female body is one of the most visible images in our society. It is observed, judged, idealized, and commented on. Beauty, age, and physical appearance are openly discussed. Far less visible, however, are the experiences that become inscribed in the body: longing, loneliness, desire, vulnerability, loss, shame, or the fear of wasting precious time.
The project “What We Don’t Say” explores this tension between visibility and invisibility. It asks why it is easier for us to talk about the female body than about the experiences, memories, and feelings that live within it.
The project takes as its starting point stories from women of different ages and backgrounds. War, displacement, and migration are part of these experiences, but they are not the sole focus. The project seeks to uncover what connects women regardless of their background, generation, or life story.
Concept
We are collecting stories about topics that are often kept silent: closeness and distance, intimacy and sexuality, aging, loneliness, lost time, unfulfilled relationships, and the desire for a fresh start.
The central question is: Why does our society find it easier to look at the female body than to listen to the stories that live within it?
Installation
The project combines literature, body art, photography, and video into a single artistic installation.
Olha Cheremushkina’s body art works view the body not as an object of observation, but as a vessel for memory, identity, and experience. The deliberate use of the naked body serves neither to provoke nor to sexualize. It opens up a space for questions about vulnerability, intimacy, sexuality, shame, desire, and personal freedom.
The creative process is documented on film. At the same time, Lesia Ivanenko is developing a photographic series that depicts fragments of a life: painted skin, hands, backs, hair, fabrics, and everyday objects—an empty pillow, a cell phone with unread messages, spaces of waiting, and traces of human presence.
Literature
The collected stories give rise to a cycle of literary texts—poems, inner monologues, miniatures, letters, and digital dialogues.
The texts do not merely illustrate the exhibition. They form an independent artistic layer and enter into a dialogue with photography, body art, and video.
Exhibition
The exhibition is conceived as a space for experience. Body, image, language, and movement converge simultaneously, opening up different perspectives on memory, identity, and the female experience.
A literary-performative reading will take place at the opening. Texts, photographs, video, and the painted body merge into a shared artistic event.
Reflection
“What We Don’t Say” views art not as an answer, but as an invitation to dialogue.
The exhibition explores which experiences are allowed to be visible and which remain hidden to this day. It invites viewers to rethink femininity, intimacy, sexuality, age, migration, and personal memory.
IBZ – International Encounter Center
Bergstr. 7a
18057 Rostock
German-Ukrainian Center Rostock e.V.
Tel.: 01520 7151337
ukrzentrumhro2020@outlook.com
www.deutsch-ukrainisches-zentrum-rostock.de
