Increased exposure
Pull Up the Roots
Oleksandra Voronina, Vitalii Kravets, Serhii Pohrebyskyi October 16–November 1, 2026
Konsthallen ABC, Vällingby
Pull Up the Roots, an exhibition of work by three Ukrainian artists at Konsthallen ABC in Vällingby, opened on a Friday evening. Hours before, news broke of an apparent decision to prevent some Ukrainian defense systems, and drones targeting Russian assets, from accessing the internet. It remains unclear whether that decision was initiated within the White House or by private company Starlink’s division for military clients, called Starshield, though the latter claimed responsibility a week later.
Birds that will not find their way back is the single work that grabs your focus upon entering the exhibition. Created by artist and exhibition curator Oleksandra Voronina, it comprises roughly 50 unique, wooden bird sculptures of various shapes and sizes, hanging by threads, each seemingly heading urgently in a different direction. Some are near the ceiling, others barely above the floor, and others are beak-to-beak, about to collide. The installation looks like a chaotic moment of frozen time, perhaps the split second after an explosion. None of the birds know what’s just happened nor what they’re supposed to do. This is not the aerial, harmonious ballet of a murmuration; this is an ad hoc squadron whose methods of intercommunication just broke.
Along the perimeter, artist Serhii Pohrebyskyi shows a diverse array of work, organized into three sets plus one standalone standout. Riddarhyttan – Found Fragment is a stone from Västmanland County whose iron content is so high it can hang from a magnet. Levitating in stillness above its shadow, it serves as a poignant counterpoint to Voronina’s birds, one quiet gesture of balance and magic amidst their silent shrieks. Pohrebyskyi says the stone caught his eye in Riddarhyttan because it looked so much like shrapnel. Similarly, the unframed photographs titled Stockholm Diary capture cracks, divots, and other wounds in this city’s walls and sidewalks that reminded Pohrebyskyi of injuries that appeared daily in the buildings of Kiev. For Imprints of Absence, he pressed soft clay into these cracks and voids; now dried, their ridges and hills hang on the walls, miniature topographies like rudimentary maps one could hide in a backpack or a garden. Pohrebyskyi turned just one of these clay negatives back into a positive: Imprints of Absence includes a plaster cast of a pitted brick from Stadshuset, one of the building’s eight million.
The little hills in the clay negatives are echoed by The Aesthetics of War, Pohrebyskyi’s row of eleven small, square photographs in white frames. Each captures a monument or statue in Ukraine once freshly buried in white sandbags for protection; some are also further surrounded by crates or retaining walls. Pohrebyskyi says the preventive measures were taken quickly, in the first few days of Russia’s February 2022 invasion, and that these cocoons are breaking down heading into a fifth winter of war, the sandbags now torn or repurposed, exposing the bronze and stone figures in parts. Conflict generates awkward architectures neither temporary nor permanent, whose disintegration makes vulnerability visible.
Like Pohrebyskyi, artist Vitalii Kravets works with various media and his contributions help knit the whole exhibition together. Both the sculptural diptych The Life of Walls and an octet of square oil paintings titled Kraing – Deposits utilize a palette borrowed from iron-rich regions of Ukraine. The latter are stained and striated with the unmistakable browns and oranges of rust. In contrast, three more paintings by Kravets are almost violently colorful, each a portrait from memory of a person no longer alive. Two look melancholy and withdrawn, their eyes merely black sockets, like the small pits Pohrebyskyi found and filled with clay. Between them, a third face pops forward with the panicked energy of Voronina’s distressed flock, wide-eyed and terrified, brow furrowed, teeth bared, still alive.
Zachary Whittenburg
Zachary Whittenburg has been a journalist, administrator, photographer, and grantmaker in arts and culture since 2008. A regular contributor to Dance Magazine and former dance editor at Time Out Chicago magazine, he has written for numerous additional publications including Critical Correspondence, Critical Read, Dance International, Flavorwire, Pointe, and Total Theatre UK.