In Memoriam of Us All: Vitaliy Kokhan’s war memory art intervention in Kharkiv

The facade of School No. 165 became a canvas for messages, reading: “This wall witnesses the horrors of war since February 24, 2022”; “Mordor—35 km”; “F-16”; “Some didn’t leave” — as well as images of everyday objects from the wartime reality: a car, a cat, a trident, a diode, a fruit dish, a gun. With his graffiti-referencing work, artist Vitaliy Kokhan documented the wartime experiences of Ukraine, his own thoughts, and the memories of locals. The artist created images and inscriptions in self-invented lettering by breaking square mosaic tiles off the facade of the damaged building. As if tattooed on the school’s walls are the pictures and messages that form a composition with all the traces of destruction. These messages aim to communicate with the local community and foster dialogue about and reflection on the present and the future.

Kharkiv’s first discussions on memorialization took place precisely in North Saltivka in 2022. The neighborhood is a mere 30 km away from the Russian border, and in 2022, the Russian army was two kilometers short of approaching the school, where the line of defense lay. None of Saltivka’s 120 apartment blocks was left unscathed, and attacks on the neighborhood continue even now. Some of the buildings undergo repairs, while others await demolition.

Having spoken with locals and visited Saltivka on multiple occasions, Vitaliy Kokhan, who searched for a site for his intervention-to-be, decided to go with School No. 165, which the Russians hit with their shelling. The school, pummeled by many Russian attacks, will eventually be renovated. For the duration of martial law, children study remotely, and ten staff members care for the building.

“Memorialization through street art may be considered a temporary or situational approach to working with memory. Partially abandoned and lifeless, Saltivka’s mutilated structures yearn for new meaning, and graffiti is an excellent way of breathing life into silent facades, as I see it,” Vitalii Kokhan commented. “Especially significant is the technique: breaking the mosaic tiles off the wall panels. I spotted it in Kharkiv 10 years ago, and it struck me as something special. This visual language is reminiscent of the doodles often seen in graph notebooks as well as the patterns in Ukrainian embroidery and textiles. It’s pretty much tattoos on buildings.”

Curator Kateryna Semenyuk, a co-founder of the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform, recalled that the idea emerged during the Memorialization Practices Lab expeditions to North Saltivka in 2024, but had since evolved and transformed: “At the time, we took artists and architects on a quest to find a memorialization language for Kharkiv in response to locals’ demands. Saltivka residents didn’t want to conserve the destruction or perpetuate the victimhood messaging. Instead, they saw rebuilding the neighborhood and keeping the city alive as a matter of first importance. With this in mind, we teamed up with Vitaliy Kokhan to carry out a project devoid of overbearing monumental forms and eventually arrived at the idea of a temporary intervention, which resonated with many locals.”

The works can be seen on the grounds of School No. 165 at 7 Metrobudnykiv St.

Vitaliy Kokhan was born in Sumy in 1987 and studied at D. S. Bortnianskyi Sumy Professional College of Arts and Culture and the monumental arts section of Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. He is a permanent participant and curator of Borderland Space («Простір прикордоння»), an international land art symposium held in the village of Mohrytsia. A BIRUCHIY contemporary art project resident since 2013, he participated in the NonStopMedia International Biennale of Youth Projects (2014), Festival of Young Ukrainian Artists (2017), and numerous group and solo exhibitions. In 2018, he got a nomination for the PinchukArtCentre Prize. Vitaliy works with media, painting, graphics, installations, photography, video, and land art, focusing on collective memory matters. Specifically, he took part in the Memorialization Practices Lab (2024) and the Contest for Memorial Projects in Memory of the Holodomors Victims in Ukraine (Melitopol, 2021).