OUR RIUKZAK: Maria + Yehor

By Lesia A. Maruschak, VYDNO Collective

OUR RIUKZAK is an invitation to hold time in your hands, to unfold its layers, and to confront its haunting echoes. This portable exhibition-in-a-box collapses nearly a century of history, bringing the stories of Ukraine’s Holodomor famine-genocide (1932-1933) into dialogue with the ongoing atrocities of today’s war. It bridges memory, trauma, and resilience, urging us to witness the lives of children caught in the violence of history.

At its heart, OUR RIUKZAK is a bilingual (Ukrainian English) photographic exhibition, designed to foster reflection and dialogue in intimate, adaptable spaces. The box—compact and unassuming when closed—unfolds to reveal a cross-shaped display containing 24 posters, descriptive labels, and three essays. The form echoes its contents: a physical manifestation of stories unfolding, inviting us to trace the connections between historical and contemporary crises.

The essays, including one by Dr. Kristina Hook, ground the project in a critical framework, linking past genocides to contemporary realities. Hook’s analysis highlights how the Holodomor’s legacy has shaped Ukraine’s cultural resilience and how historical narratives are weaponized by authoritarian regimes. These essays offer context, helping audiences to navigate the images, the silences, and the emotions embedded in this exhibition. They emphasize that resilience is not a passive state—it is an act of resistance, a force that endures even in the face of erasure.

At the core of OUR RIUKZAK lies a focus on children. It asks us to reflect on the vulnerability of those who often bear the heaviest burdens of conflict. Children are both witnesses and victims, their lives profoundly shaped by trauma yet embodying a resilience that defies the weight of violence. Through a delicate interplay of historical gravitas and contemporary urgency, the project creates a continuum of memory—one that challenges us to see the threads connecting past and present.

The Holodomor section features works from Lesia Maruschak’s Project MARIA and Roman Pyatkovka’s Holodomor: Phantoms of the 1930s. Maruschak’s imagery is inspired by Maria F., a young survivor of the Holodomor who emigrated to Canada. Her work captures the silence of intergenerational trauma—the gaps in memory that persist and the resilience that sustains. It is a meditation on absence and on the persistence of memory even when voices are silenced. Pyatkovka’s work shifts the lens to individual tragedies under the Soviet regime: children coerced into betrayal, families torn apart, and lives fractured by systemic violence. His photographs confront us with the invisible scars of fear and oppression, reminding us how power shapes the most intimate corners of human life.

The contemporary section transitions to the war in Ukraine today, focusing on the resilience of children living through unimaginable realities.

Named after Yehor, an 11-year-old boy whose life was chronicled by Lynsey Addario in The New York Times Magazine, this section includes photographs by Ukrainian visual artists and photojournalists such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Evgeny Maloletka. These images illuminate the children’s resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship, capturing not only the physical destruction of war but also the emotional landscapes of young lives shaped by displacement, violence, and survival. Their defiant spirits, framed within the fragility of childhood, act as a powerful metaphor for the enduring courage of a nation’s youngest citizens.

What makes OUR RIUKZAK truly transformative is its participatory design. As the box is unpacked and installed in museums, libraries, schools, and community spaces, audiences become curators of their own experience. This act of unfolding and arranging emphasizes that memory is not static. It evolves as we engage with it, as we question and reinterpret the narratives we inherit. The inclusion of children’s voices deepens this engagement, asking participants to consider the psychological dimensions of conflict and the ethical responsibilities of witnessing.

The pairing of Maria’s story with Yehor’s illuminates the unbroken thread of trauma and resilience that weaves through Ukrainian history. It is a juxtaposition that demands reflection: How do we hold the past while confronting the present? How do we translate memory into action? The act of remembering becomes an active form of resistance, a way to push back against forces that seek to erase.

Ultimately, OUR RIUKZAK is more than an exhibition—it is an urgent call to empathy. It asks us to sit with discomfort, to confront the weight of loss, and to honor the strength of those who endure. It reminds us that children are not just symbols of innocence—they are agents of survival and resilience, their stories shaping our collective understanding of conflict and humanity. By engaging with OUR RIUKZAK, we are not merely looking at history; we are invited to feel its echoes, to hold its weight, and to carry its lessons forward. It is a space for mourning and for hope, for reckoning and for action.