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The video art work of Zinaida is edgy, enthralling and enigmatic.
Born Zinaida Kubar in Ukraine in 1975, the artist generally goes by her first name only, much like a pop star, and that seems particularly fitting. In her current exhibition at the CVPA Campus Gallery, five videos run continually.
One of them is “Flow,” a 2016 work that clocks in at 9½ minutes and features the artist herself, with all the star presence of a young Deborah Harry, darting in front of a dark background, making motions with a technological magic wand, drawing lines and symbols in the ether that dance and glow with intense electric blue or fiery red and linger in the air, unfathomably.
It is accompanied by an unrelenting percussive dirge.
“Flow” is mesmerizing and unknowable. The artist reveals little in this work in particular but it certainly speaks to the need for ritual. Zinaida’s gestures suggest that art manifests itself as pure energy, as basic and necessary as nature.
At 50 minutes, “Red Piano” is the lengthiest video in the exhibition. It is actually displayed twice, side by side, running simultaneously but not in sync. A bright red upright piano is inexplicably on fire in a snowy field. The viewer sees the past and the future at the same time.
Perhaps a bit too melodramatically, an accompanying gallery writing noted that “the piano burns in the same way that does the artist’s soul when she creates her work.”
All of the work in the exhibition predates Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine and the carnage and devastation that followed, so nothing speaks to the war. Instead, much of the imagery and sensibility is derived from Ukrainian and Slavic culture, folklore, mythology, and tradition, with nods to Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient paganism.
“Wedding Crown,” a short 2019 video projected on the wall below waist-level, makes reference to the slaughter of a goose, the feathers from its neck to become the key element in an elaborate headdress for a young bride.
The exhibition as a whole is unified as a series of literal and metaphorical depictions of universal womanness. Provided text for the show notes that “Zinaida portrays the transformation or cycle of life, where a woman is a vessel, carrier of new life.”
The artist herself explains “Due to the ability to give life, the female energy is the basis of all things.”
A highlight of the exhibition is “Dakini ll,” a 17½-minute video. In Buddhism and Hinduism, a dakini — which can be translated as “sky dweller”— is a powerful female deity. The dakini is a maternal protector and a divine being of feminine wisdom.
The video depicts women descending a moving bridge deep within a lush forest. It is a depiction of the certainty of the passage of time and the metamorphosis of one form to the next: from little girl to a mature woman ready for marriage and maternity to wise old babushka.
It is often simplified in western culture and in paganism as the Triple Goddess — the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, each indicating a separate stage in the female life cycle.
“Dakini ll” is a wonderful short film in which some women will see themselves, and some men will see their Daughter, Wife and Mother. Strangely, there is no male classical mythology equivalent. Perhaps, Boy, Father and Sage (or Fool)?
The remaining video, called “Transformation,” lends its name to the exhibition. At just over 8 minutes, it is dense with symbolism and limitless possibilities and interpretations.
Working with a sparse and effective color arrangement of white, black and red — the most primal palette of all — indicating the light of day, the darkness of night and the blood of life, the artist delivers a complex and evocative nonlinear tale, in which nothing is explained, nor does it need to be.
The author Ruslan Provra wrote this of Zinaida’s “Transformation”: “The colors of rites of the transformation are the colors that continue each other but never iterate. Three colors — three contrast feminine images, are transformed into artistic dresses. Chastity of white, austerity of black and passion of red images is the triune sense of the beginning and the end.”
Within “Transformation” is footage of a muscular, bare chested young man grinding wheat, the only clear depiction of traditional masculinity within the entire exhibition. It does not come across as an afterthought or a token gesture, but rather as a necessary nod to the most basic duality.
Throughout “Transformation,” there are images of the kalyna, with its bright red berries, better known in the U.S. as guelder-rose or snowball viburnum. Ukrainian identity is closely tied to the natural world, especially plants. The kalyna’s red berries are prominently featured in Ukrainian music, literature and visual art.
The berries adorn the bright embroidery of the vyshyvanka, Ukraine’s national costume, and the insignia of its armed forces. The kalyna symbolizes beauty, love, womanhood, blood and motherhood.
A baby in a grassy cradle appears in “Transformation,” as does a similar vessel floating on a river, conjuring up the possibility of reference to the infant Moses in the ark of the bulrushes from the Book of Exodus. It may be all coincidence but perhaps not.
Without a doubt, Zinaida is pushing buttons and boundaries and in all the right ways. The work is stunning and provocative, leaving one hungry for more.
“Transformation” was organized by UMass Dartmouth Gallery Director Viera Levitt, with the supportive collaboration of Sapar Contemporary Gallery + Incubator (New York). It will be on display until March 25.
A reception is planned for Tuesday, March 5, from 5-7 p.m. at the CVPA Campus Gallery, 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth. At 5, Zinaida will call from Kyiv via Zoom for a conversation with Levitt and Nina Levent, Ph.D, founding director of Sapar Contemporary Gallery, both who will be present in person.
Four UMass Dartmouth music students — Davon Fuentes (piano), Bronwyn Pearson (flute), Austin Packard (violin) and Kathryn McGann (bass clarinet) — will perform a Ukrainian folk song arranged for the event, “Oy u Luzi Chevrona Kalyna” (“Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”).
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
