Babas Unlimited

It’s Monday. Yay! I love the start of a new week, it always feels so productive, like we are getting somewhere.

We got a phone call from Anna-the-translator this morning telling us that Xenia received an email copy of our age revision last Friday, and we can expect the hard copy to arrive via courier by Thursday, but from my experience with sending documents, it only takes 3 business days. Then she said once that is received we should be able to go to the Dept for our third and last appt next Monday or Tuesday, with any luck. So we’ll see what happens with that. This week, based on previous experience of watching the other couples here, I think we’ll want to stick close to home- as if they get word on any surprise files we could be phoned and told to literally RUN to the Dept office within 15 minutes if strings get pulled. That’s our plan.

On Saturday we went back to the WW2 museum for the afternoon. (Weekends are safe, because nobody will call you then.) What a place- anybody with even the most remote interest in history would have loved it. It’s my favourite type of museum, because 99% of it was curated as personal stories foremost, rather than just historical documents and film reels. Room after room of glass cases in chronological order from the start of the Nazi party in the mid-to-late 1930’s centered around how this directly affected the lives of the Ukrainian and Russian “everyday Joes”, right up to the rebuilding of Ukraine after the Resistance. Inside the cases were generally photographs of a soldier or a family member, and then their very jacket or shirt, or some personal belongings that made it feel very real like you were looking at the contents of someone’s pockets today and then a letter they had written about a personal experience to someone during the very midst of the war. To see the handwriting on yellowing paper was very visceral and poignant. Handwriting always affects me like this; it’s like the ambassador for the very essence of “you” after you are actually gone from the earth. To see how people make their letters with the dips and swirls and line breaks and sometimes even tear-stained pages makes everything so real to me; it’s like you are looking in on a person’s most intimate secrets in their thoughts with what they are writing and then the subtext of how it all looks from a very visual point of view.

The deeply frustrating part of it was that everything was in either Ukrainian or Russian with zero English (or any other language for that matter) translation to be seen. It was so difficult to be in this sea of information, yet not have the ability to read and understand anything! So we had to trust our eyes only in understanding what we were looking at: bullet casings and posters, helmets that were peeled open like tin cans, clothing and medals, cigarette tins, flags, barbed wire, guns, sketches made in the death camps on scraps of paper, broken shovels from forced labour camps in Siberia (where my Mom’s father was once deported for fighting in the Hungarian Resistance- luckily he survived), ration books and medical supplies in Red Cross bags. It broke my heart that they had no guides available for tours, nor did they have any of those electronic devices you could carry around and listen to in you ears. Really folks, there are things that are just not even in the same world as we know it and museums here sadly are one of them. Each room had a little old lady sitting on a chair with an old plastic rotary phone on a little table beside her- she was the security guard. But the creativity and thoughtfulness that went into figuring out how everything should be displayed was once again, very Ukrainian in style. Being here is really driving home how innately artistic Ukrainians are as a cultural group-similar to the way the Irish are so well known for literature. There truly is a Ukrainian “style” when it comes to art and display in a way that I’ve never really seen before and it is very contemporary and also allegorical. Where Paris is full of romantic mythology in the form of decorative iconic figures everywhere you go- bridges, fountains and the like- you can see that Ukrainians tend to value and focus more on the interior world of an individual, seen in the context of what is going on around them: the quiet eye of a hurricane. When they tell stories through art it is never really biblical in nature or based on the archetypes of obvious mythologies, instead it is a deeply personal snapshot of cultural story telling. This all must have everything to do with the influence of Communism and the unyielding fight for Ukrainian independence, and that spirit and story seems to wrap around everything you see like a fine light-filled dust or a veil. I think that strength of spirit is what I find so attractive about Ireland, and the Irish people too.

Anyhow, in each room of the museum what your attention immediately is drawn to is the still life sculpture or scene in the center of the room, which is then supported in a ring of other exhibits around it. For example in the first room of the museum you walk in and are greeted with broken fuselage of an airplane, a Nazi flag hanging from the ceiling (by paperclips- unfortunately this is what I’m talking about when I say that our ideas of a museum are worlds apart- it is tragic that there just isn’t money for preservation here the same way there is in other richer country’s museums… and no, I do not think that the choice of paperclips had anything to do with artistic expression, as they were sadly beginning to tear & ruin the antique flag) and a large poster of Hitler’s manic face hanging slightly over the center swastika. Also from the ceiling hung antique Ukrainian army wool coats worn by the soldiers, positioned like they were swooping down towards the flag like a swarm of birds, or human bombs, or ghosts, or all three. Who else would think of making something so striking and sculptural out of true preserved debris from the war fields, and yet so contemporary and poetic in the manner of curation and exhibition? This is what I mean: it is so beautifully and completely Ukrainian. It could be made by no one else. Just like the pysanky (decorated Ukrainian eggs) and the symbolism & storytelling in the artwork elevates the egg to a greater sum than all of it’s parts, all I could think about was the similarities between the collections of parts in each still life making something larger than each component within them. Eggs, embroidery, sculpture from war debris, folk art and fine art, and the storytelling of “everyday heroes”… just brainfood that will keep you awake for nights going over all of its assembled and disassembled beauty.

The crummy thing was we actually ran out of time before we ran out of museum. We were up on the second floor when the announcement came over the speakers that they were closing in 15 minutes, and we still had a couple of rooms to see. We’ll have to go back because as we walked to the exit the most flabbergasting, visually stunning and obvious piece de resistance (pardon the pun!) was the very last room. Nothing could prepare you for coming around the corner and walking into it like a surprise…

It was literally a giant room, snaking hundreds and hundreds of feet long, utterly FILLED from floor to double height ceiling with black, white and sepia toned photographs of tens of thousands of people and families. You could hear it’s effect on everyone each time they entered: a soft small gasp as you took in the sight before you. Every photograph hung in a frame made with double glass so you could see layers and layers of people through all the suspended frames one in front of the other. I honestly can’t do it justice with description- you would have to literally be standing there to feel the power flood over you. It is without a doubt the most amazing thing I have ever seen, in any gallery or museum, anywhere on this earth. And let me tell you- I’ve been places! LOL!

Sadly, we were being propelled through all of it too fast. I broke free of the herd and ran around the enormous table set in the very center of the room running from one end to the other with each place set by a water glass on one side and a matching army canteen made of metal on the other, with identity documentation under glass like an endless table runner in the center. I was so mad I couldn’t even look at all oft hat long enough to take it all in! Anyhow, what I really wanted to stand before and soak up like my life depended on it was a giant tribute to all the Babas of the country, who held their families and homes and country together as the world around them exploded and fell apart during the war and the Ukrainian Resistance. A GIANT photo of hundred of Babas standing together was central, with hanging embroidered clothing from the ceiling like celebratory streamers, and then individual pictures of old women in headscarves in every emotion possible: some beaming with pride, some with their hands covering desperate crying eyes, some looking furious and determined, others looking soft and steady. It was electrifying. Their presence filled the room like nothing else. It is another memory I will carry inside me until the day I die.