HAPPY FALLS

The focus of the texts of this book is on the stories of women who consider themselves witnesses of their own lives and the “great story” that forced them to change their biography, reading of reality, and place of residence. The storylines unfold around traumatic events in Ukraine, the impact of which is found in fragments of conversations, life experiences, and everyday situations.

The combination of authorial text and image is a characteristic feature of Yevgenia Belorusets’s artistic practice. “Happy Falls” is a place of coexistence of photographic stories and textual storylines, where they intertwine as different types of speech.

Women’s stories remain mostly invisible, and the voices of the heroines of this book are barely audible in times of direct threats to life, restrictions on civil rights, loss of work, and risks of being exploited. But the very presence of a voice testifies to the unpredictable possibilities of imagination, the possibility of constructing one’s own world and affirming its existence.

The artist's interest is directed to the situation of those who unexpectedly find themselves on the periphery, which is not easy to appeal to, and even more difficult to learn to speak from there. So is everything insignificant, trivial, random that the reader encounters in "Happy Falls" really like that?

The publication, discussions and presentations will take place within the framework of the "Found Voices" project implemented with the support of the German Foreign Ministry. Information support for the public program will be provided by the publication "Prostory".