Daria Kozlova and Arwina Afsharnejad
Daria Kozlova is a Ukrainian artist whose works explore memory as a tool for resistance, fracture, care, and repair. Kozlova’s practice spans video, sound and text with a special interest in ways the imperial gaze articulates imaginaries, spaces and data circulation. Arwina Afsharnejad is a Berlin-based artist and researcher whose works focus on the intersections between technology and fascism. With their exploration of digital algorithms and various software, Afsharnejad investigates how these technologies perpetuate systems of oppression.
Izolyatsia
2021,
simulated environment, beta v.1.1
The digital environment simulates Izolyatsia, a former factory and art center turned into a prison in the artist’s hometown of Donetsk, Ukraine. After the city’s capture in 2014, Russian paramilitary troops seized Izolyatsia, looted and destroyed the artworks. For almost a decade, the building has been used as a military base, a training facility for soldiers, and a secret concentration camp. Navigating an incorporeal avatar the user can experience multiple dimensions of Russian occupation and necropolitics by revealing insights about its nature and underlying causes, time traveling and crossing borders into as yet unreachable parts of the Ukrainian east. Throughout the journey across fragmented narratives, the audience is invited to discover layered temporalities of memory, to mourn and commemorate. Together, Arwina Afsharnejad and Daria Kozlova develop simulated environments for resistance, solace, and healing. They critically examine the entanglements of extractivism, colonial exploitation, and violence through coding, archival and media research. Their works have been exhibited at the Museum of Photography Berlin, CTM Festival, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Festspielhaus Hellerau, Ars Electronica, and Documenta 15, among others.
neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf, Between Bridges, Prater Galerie
February 23–June 9