CONCEPTUAL ART

Intercity Red Book is the fruit of Iryna Beschetnova creative work at the New Memory collective residency for Ukrainian internally displaced artists. 

It took part at the eponymous exhibition at the Lviv Municipal Art Center, Ukraine in March 2026.

The project emerged from artist's reflections on the formation of a new memory through the lens of forced internal displacement, specifically, her displacement from the city of Kharkiv to the city of Lviv. 

At its core lies the idea that words, like living beings, undergo transformation or even complete disappearance under the pressure of external circumstances.

Due to artist's physical relocation, the information about her geographical belonging, the names of meeting points and certain dialectal names of objects have changed. Distinctive Kharkiv words and toponyms have disappeared from her language. They have gone extinct, partially or completely. From this arose the idea to create own Red Book of words, to record phrases that are disappearing or have disappeared for the artist as a result of her relocation from Kharkiv to Lviv. The disappering words are written with a special ink that gradually disappears itself.

To the Intercity Red Book the artist also adds actual for her Lviv words, that replaced the old ones. These words will remain once the Kharkiv words have fully disappeared. But why are they also included into the Red Book if they are still in use? The experience of displacement teaches that at any moment life’s context may shift again, making today’s important words unnecessary and doomed to oblivion. Thus, even current words are perceived as endangered from the outset. That's why they are written down in pencil.

The Book contains not only words related to Kharkiv and Lviv, but also linguistic transformations of other residents from different cities and experiences of displacement.

Visitors to the exhibition who had experienced relocation or displacement were also invited to take part in the project by adding their own examples to the Intercity Red Book.

This brick, found by Iryna Beschetnova on the way to the residency, reminded her of a multi-story building, partially damaged.

In the conditions of a full-scale war, in which Ukraine has been living since 2022, it quickly became clear that buildings are not at all the strong structures they once seemed. They are defenseless against missiles, bombs, drones.

This ready-made object pushed the artist to realize that bricks, concrete and other building materials in the current Ukrainian reality can also be marked as Fragile.

Collage created by Iryna Beschetnova as part of a collage workshop on a day when Iryna was unable to attend it. The theme that day was Identity. Since this is a very broad concept, instead of images of objects that could end up in a collage with such a theme, Iryna used words that describe these objects. In addition, thanks to the properties of words, in this collage she could use something immaterial, like feelings, broadening the theme. Since "collage" in French literally means "to glue", this literality is also supported here by the only glued element: a dot at the end of the last sentence.

Written text:

This is a word collage about my identity. Imagine that anything that can define a person is represented here: a passport photo and the passport itself, my resume, my Internally Displaced Person document, photos or drawings of parts of my body, a smile and many tears, loneliness, a few warm hugs, rented apartments and relocations, laughter, books, films, and conversations. I made this collage out of words because I didn't have any materials, but it's still a collage.

This project was created by Iryna Beschetnova as a result of the residency with the theme Woman Artist in Wartime. Each word in this topic attracted her attention. That's why, instead of creating a work on this topic, she decided to analyze the basic definitions, word by word, embedded in the theme of the residency. The artist turned to the study of the very concepts of “woman” and “artist”, questioning their seeming obviousness. In addition, she wanted to understand the (im)possibility of transferring one’s own experience to others, in particular, the experience of living in wartime.

By analyzing the widespread yet unstable biological, social and cultural ideas about “woman”, as well as the numerous definitions of “art” and “artist”, the work demonstrates their contradictions. Iryna Beschetnova wonders: if the criteria are unclear, how were she and the other participants selected for the residency as women and artists?

At the heart of the project is not an answer, but the process of doubt itself: an attempt to understand what identities are based on, and which of the definitions to choose to define oneself. The project captures a moment of confusion: the lack of clear criteria by which the artist can unambiguously define her own identity. In the collage, this thought is expressed in numerous photos of Iryna Beschetnova in various states (including wartime), which relate to “woman” and “artist”. Despite their number, the criteria do not become clearer, but only demonstrate the variety of manifestations of these concepts.

The project also addresses the experience of living in wartime as something fundamentally incommunicable because of the accumulation of various feelings and states, just as it is impossible to describe herself by one definition of a woman or an artist.

In the collage, this incommunicability is conveyed through the use of the image of the Fountain (1917), attributed to Marcel Duchamp, which overlaps her images. As it known, this ready-made was created with the idea that important reflections and feelings that were born in the process of creating of an art object can never be fully conveyed through the object itself. Therefore, it becomes unimportant what the final object is: something created by the artist or something to which the artist did not contribute, like a store-bought urinal. 

By using the Fonatain image, Iryna Beschetnova's project emphasizes the impossibility of conveying one’s own experiences, in particular,  those of living in wartime, or being a woman and an artist. At the same time, she sees multiple definitions and attempts to talk about experience despite everything as the form of an answer.

Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) is a conceptual artwork by American artist Robert Rauschenberg consisting of a nearly blank sheet of paper with faint traces of charcoal. This sheet of paper was originally a drawing given to him by American artist Willem de Kooning. 

Rauschenberg erased the drawing to explore whether art could be made solely through subtraction. Can the erased work of the other artist become his full-fledged creative act and an independent work?

Iryna Beschetnova made a photo of Rauschenberg's work. This photo arose her question: Can her photograph of the work of the other artist, who made a full-fledged creative act and an independent work by erasing someone else's work, become her full-fledged creative act and an independent work?

The One=Eleven Synergy project is an attempt to combine aesthetic and conceptual art in one work.

As known, aesthetic art appeals to emotions, while conceptual art expresses an idea and appeals to intellect, ignoring emotions.

Iryna Beschetnova's project follows the American artist Joseph Kosuth with his artwork One and Eight (1965), where the words are both: the work itself and its description.

Iryna's piece One=Eleven Synergy also expresses the idea of ​​a thing in itself. This artwork describes itself as follows: White Paper Black Paint Cyrillic Ukrainian Language Head Drawing Eleven, where Eleven is the number of objects on the paper, that make the artwork: ten words + one image.

Thus, in this project the drawing of the head refers to aesthetic art, and the words, which are both: the body of the work and its description, including description of the head, refer to conceptual art. 

Through this interection, this work is demonstrating an attempt to combine these two artistic approaches in one piece.