Dana Kavelina’s newly commissioned film tackles a difficult and complex subject: the Lviv Pogroms of June and July 1941 and the subsequent unfolding of the Holocaust in the city—incited by the Nazi occupation.
Kavelina’s film tackles it through animation, which she understands not only as a technique but as a figure for resurrection. A fictional setting, the laboratory of history, frames multiple voices speaking the many languages of the city. They tell a history rewritten from the perspective of the resurrected victims, based on eyewitness accounts of survivors.
The film The Lemberg Machine (2023) is a part of the group exhibition Church of Ruined Modernity at steirischerherbst’23.
Dana Kavelina (1995, Melitopol, Ukraine) is an artist and filmmaker. She works with text, painting, graphics, video, and installation and produces animated films that explore personal and historical trauma, vulnerability, and perceptions of war outside mainstream narratives. Her works have been exhibited at the Kmytiv Museum; the Closer Art Center, Kyiv; and the Sakharov Center, Moscow. She has received awards at the Odesa International Film Festival and the KROK International Animated Film Festival.
Opening hours: Tue to Sun, 11.00 am – 7.00 pm
Venue: Minoritenkloster and Minoritenzentrum Graz, Mariahilferplatz 3, 8020 Graz
Note: Of the four exhibition rooms, the attic and Franziskussaal are not wheelchair-accessible. In addition, the attic can only be entered with flat shoes.
Free admission!
Cover picture: Dana Kavelina, The Lemberg Machine (2023), video still, courtesy of the artist
