KINBURN is a form of re-existence for my real site-specific installations in a virtual space that is created in the image and likeness of the Kinburn Spit. The real Kinburn Spit (before the war, which started at 24.02.2022) used to be a wildlife reserve; the virtual one has to become a reserve for my works.
All my site-specific installations, together with the architectural pieces that are their integral parts, are transferred to the virtual Kinburn Spit as mini-islands. All the islands together form an archipelago parallel to the coast of the Spit. In this space one can move and view the islands themselves and the installations inside from different perspectives.
The Kinburn Spit is in the north-western part of the Kinburn peninsula, between the Dnieper-Bug estuary and the Black Sea. In the 1990s, one could live there in the open. The only buildings on the entire coast were an abandoned port building, a dilapidated pier, and two fishermen’s huts. Because the area was a wildlife reserve at the time, its main feature was absolute seclusion.
Once I lived there for a month. Staying on the Spit makes one feel lost in time and space. If to move along the shore, the picture before the eyes hardly changes. It is as if to move without changing location.
The shore of the Kinburn Spit is the perfect platform for contemplating the horizon, where, from edge to edge, nothing obstructs the view of the boundary between sea and sky. Facing the sea, the sunrise is at the left edge of the field of view, while the sunset is at the right. And the sun and moon will be the main characters in this show, constantly appearing and disappearing with small changes against the screen-like background of sea and sky.
In one way or another, almost all my work came about because I lived on the Kinburn Spit. This place in my mind has become an ideal being from Plato’s world of ideas, a being of which all my works are manifestations.
