The magic of Polissia

Slowing down time, by Andrii Kotliarchuk

From 24 February to 9 March 2025

VERSIÓN ESPAÑOLA

Eleven years of war. Three years of invasion. Ukraine is fighting for its freedom to preserve its culture and identity. The first Russian bombs fell on Ukrainian soil in 2014. On 24 February 2022, a full-scale war began. Ukraine continues to confront the aggressor country, defending its people and its free land as it fights for faith, truth and independence. We thank everyone who supports us.

Art is the universal language of the planet, and as long as culture exists, a nation exists. But today more than 41 museums in Ukraine—the largest country in Europe, covering an area of 603,548 sq km—have been damaged, occupied or destroyed by Russia. In our belief in the victory of light over darkness, we propose to delve into the mystical world of Ukrainian history, where there is genuine beauty of nature, intertwined with traditions and life without war. A world where hope, faith and love exist.

Polissia is an enigmatic region in northern Ukraine. A land of relict forests, ancient beliefs and sacred Gothic architecture. A natural museum of our time and a unique world where the past is intertwined with the present, keeping traditions alive.

Andrii Kotliarchuk has been travelling around Polissia with an analogue camera for more than a decade, creating images that show us an archaic, mystical world, bastion of an ancient civilisation that dwells in the forests of Polissia. The author uses large-format black and white film to take his pictures and an Emil Busch Portait Aplanat 280mm lens made in the late 19th century.

Andrii Kotliarchuk. Girl in the Mask of an Ancestor
Andrii Kotliarchuk. Polesian Samhain and the Moscow Tank

Andrii's encounter with the pagans of Polissia was accidental. While exploring the tributaries of the River Teteriv in search of photogenic landscapes, he came across an old military map showing a stream with a historical name and decided to explore it.

The traditions inherent to Polissia are very different from the Cossack and steppe cultures that dominate modern Ukrainian identity. The region is home to a people untouched by globalisation, who have preserved their own rituals and dwell in the unexplored forests of that region.

In the late fourth century BCE, the Eastern Slavs, then known as the Antes, were pagans and lived in isolated villages. The prince was usually elected by the people, and already in those distant days there were city-republics with a democratic form of government. These cities lost their independence in the fifteenth century, falling under the rule of the Grand Dukes of Moscow. At that time, the main occupation of the Slavs was agriculture and trade. The route that crossed the Baltic Sea, River Neva, Lake Ladoga, Lake Ilmen, River Dnieper and Black Sea formed a vital channel for trade between the Scandinavians and the Byzantine Greeks.

Andrii Kotliarchuk

Andrii Kotliarchuk

Andrii Kotliarchuk was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1966. He graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1993 and from the National Academy of Culture and Arts Management (NACAM), Faculty of Art History, in 2006. He is currently a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the NACAM.

Kotliarchuk took part in the defence of Mariupol in 2014–2015 as a member of St Mary's Volunteer Battalion. He was awarded the honorary insignias ‘For the Defence of Mariupol’ and ‘Knight's Cross of the Volunteer’, and the St Mary's Volunteer Battalion medal for his participation in the anti-terrorist operation. In February–April 2022, he took part in the defence of Kyiv as a member of the Bratstvo Volunteer Battalion.

Andrii Kotliarchuk has held more than forty exhibitions of his photographs in Ukraine and abroad. In the past five years, he has organised and taken part in numerous international and national exhibitions and festivals, including: