InFlight-OnLanding

‘InFlight-OnLanding’ is a public art installation that addresses the human aspect of the crisis brought on by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Varvara Keidan Shavrova, an Irish artist with Ukrainian heritage, has been working collaboratively with ten Ukrainian female refugees and migrants now based in Ireland. Together, they have made a large-scale collaborative artwork using an ex- military parachute. This is on display as an overhead installation in outside Photo Museum Ireland in Meeting House Square. The artwork invites viewers to look up and share in the women’s feelings of suspension and displacement and their sense of the fragile beauty of life and how Ireland is a place of safety and refuge. Between March and June, the group created artworks exploring the women’s responses to events of the last 18 months. They worked on personally meaningful photographic images, through appliqué, montage and traditional Ukrainian folk craft embroidery techniques, as well as silkscreen printing on fabric. Undertaking this tactile, meditative, process created a space where the women could process and reflect on their own experiences and share aspects of their stories in visual form. A personal testimony from one of the women artists: ‘It is the very beginning of spring and I arrived in Dublin three weeks ago. On the road of timelessness, between Februaries. Like jumping into the abyss. For the first time. When you have a parachute under your belt, but you never know for sure, what if it’s the one, the only time it won’t open?...And as I stand at the edge of the abyss, staring into the thick, bottomless darkness, I have only a parachute behind me.’ – Tetiana Odokiienko (Kharkiv). The artist, participants and Photo Museum Ireland thank: David McGinn, Louise Peat and the team at Black Church Print Studio; Rory O’Neill, Anastasiia Kovalchuk, Svitlana Falenda, Oksana Starzhynska at Irish Refugee Council; Yvonne Judge, Ukraine Civil Society Forum; Ambo Architects. Special thanks also to Irene Sanchez Alonso. This project is supported by: Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund in partnership with Business to Arts. Photo Museum Ireland is supported by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council.