Pravda Public Programme : Atmospheres of Stress
Daria Khozhai
4 March 2023

‘Pravda’, a solo-presentation by interdisciplinary artist and architect, Daria Khozhai, is a deeply personal translation of the public experience of loss and collective trauma - an intimate rumination on the uncertainties of our current times and our future. ‘Pravda’, consists of a 1:1 scale model of her childhood room in Kyiv. The walls of the installation are constructed from countless layers of hand-laid newspapers dated from 1991, the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-establishment of Ukraine's state independence. Following the Russian attacks on Ukraine, the memory of Khozhai’s first home suffered a traumatic displacement, compelling her to painstakingly recreate her room by revealing the layers of its own history. ‘Pravda’, the title of Khozhai’s exhibition, as well as a historically instrumental newspaper, translates to ‘truth’. Considering questions such as ‘How do you commemorate or memorialize the absent or missing?’, the work incites us to fill the space with our own reflections, memories, and relationships to the past in our present.

To accompany the installation Khozhai and Looiersgracht 60 have invited David Habets to present ‘Atmosphere of Stress’ a lecture and public discussion stemming from Habets’ PhD research on stress at the Amsterdam Medical Center in relationship to an artistic research that he is making around atmospheric pollution. Habets draws from his experience as a physicist and landscape architect by making situation-specific art installations, land art works and artistic research projects.

’Atmosphere of Stress’ with David Habets will take place on Saturday March 4, 2023 from 17:30-18:30 at Looiersgracht 60. Please email us at info@looiersgracht60.org with any questions or to reserve a seat.

David Habets

David Habets works as physicist and landscape architect making situation-specific art installations, land art works and artistic research projects. Working collectively in the core-team of RAAAF, and as a researcher and architect for TNO (former National Dutch Research Institute), he operates between the crossroads of visual arts, landscape architecture and applied science. Habets has been invited to work with the HKW in Berlin, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and as Vroman Fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Currently he is a PHD-candidate based at the psychiatric department of the Amsterdam Medical Centre developing a project called Landscapes of Stress.