"You are always near"

The most moving piece of performance art I've seen in at least two or three years. To say it left me in tears is to understate the situation...sort of embarrassing, actually, since I just got through watching it for the first time at Java Dave's, whose customers have therefore gotten to see a grown man weeping (silently) in public. At the end of the piece, the message she writes in the sand appears to me to be, "Ты всегда рядом [Ti fsegdá riádom]" -- hard to translate with adequate punch, but it's literally, "You are always near," but I think in the sense of, "You have been, are now, always forever will be here."

The venue: Ukraine's branch of the "Country X Has Talent" franchise.

The medium: sand art (but note the passion that infuses her physical motions as well, such as the graceful fury with which she hurls handful after handful of sand onto the screen to obliterate the old image before bringing to life the next one).

The subject: the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

Have a whole bucket of tissue paper handy...especially if you already know anything of the history of what Ukraine suffered.



HT: Ace.