BORDERLAND SPACE
The history of Mohrytsia Land Art began in 1997, when an environmental art symposium entitled “Borderland Space” was held for the first time on the outskirts of the village of Mohrytsia. The name was not chosen by chance—it reflected both the geographical specificity of the place and the thematic direction of the initiative: the intersection of contemporary art and local history, experiment and tradition, the interaction between people and the natural environment. To understand the origins of this event, it is worth considering earlier practices from the mid-1990s.
The prerequisite for the emergence of the symposium was the Okhtyrka pottery symposia, which were held from 1994 to 1996 by the artist Hryhorii Protasov—a teacher at the Sumy College of Culture—with the participation of the artist and teacher Ganna Gidora, as well as with the support of the Sumy Art Museum. During these symposia, participants worked with the technique of black-smoked ceramics, fired in earthen kilns. This process had a distinct performative aspect: from collecting and preparing the clay, to digging the kiln, lighting and maintaining the fire, up to the culminating moment when the kiln was dismantled to reveal the results of the joint work. Each piece was not only an individual creation but also part of collective co-creation.
It was during this period that the understanding of artistic action as a form of coexistence within space was formed. For Ganna Gidora, working with both the landscape and the community was already significant at that time, and she continued to develop this approach. The Okhtyrka symposia ended in 1996 following the tragic death of their patron. However, the need for such a format was clear to both organisers and participants. The following year, this need found expression in a new form and a new location, i.e. the symposium “Borderland Space.”
text continues below
Formally, it was a summer open-air practice for students of the Sumy College of Culture. In reality, the event brought together a much wider circle of participants: artists, archaeologists, local historians, art theorists, and environmental researchers. The venue was chosen both intuitively and deliberately: the landscape near Mohrytsia—with the remnants of a Siverian settlement, chalk quarry, meadows, hills, and the River Psel—from the outset created a richly layered context for creative work.
From this point onwards, Mohrytsia began to take shape as an interdisciplinary space where artistic, local history, and environmental practices intersected.
Despite experiments with new artistic forms, the 1990s in the history of Mohrytsia were primarily a period of mimetic art. This was a stage of gradual engagement with space—both physical and imagined. Students and teachers worked as observers and researchers, immersing themselves in the environment and developing a more sensitive, conscious relationship with it.
At that stage, artistic work was mainly concentrated within the pictorial paradigm: plein-air studies, pictorial and graphic sketches, and landscape practices. Over time, however, this focus on representation began to shift. Rather than observing from the outside, there was increasing involvement in the landscape as a space for action. The image gradually lost its detached status and was “transferred” from the plane of paper directly to grass, earth, chalk, and water.
From today’s perspective, this transformation seems almost inevitable. It did not resemble borrowing or imitation, but rather a deep awareness of place. Mohrytsia land art is intuitive, yet firmly grounded. The participants of the symposium were, of course, aware of the international artistic context. They knew of the work of Richard Long, Robert Smithson, and other land art practitioners. However, for Mohrytsia, the continuous presence of participants in the location itself became a defining factor. In this consistent movement—from image to interaction, from object to process—lay the essence of the symposium.
From the outset, the Mohrytsia symposium, although arising as a self-organised initiative, also received some institutional support. At the end of the first plein-air session in 1997, representatives of the Sumy Art Museum, as well as the head of the village council, visited the site. Their interest in the process formed the basis for consolidating the results in the form of a small exhibition of decorative and applied arts in the regional museum, and for the further development of the symposium as a regular artistic practice.