Kathie Halfin

 During Post-Soviet period I faced with the sore and disarming situation of scarcity and lack of means, which left a tangible mark on my life as well as on lives of other people around.

  In order to represent that condition I constructed social, domestic space which embraces the scarcity and longing. In Ukraine kitchen is such a place. People share their intimate thoughts with friends or family members there, it can be the field of battle between relatives, who often live together. At the same time it serves as a storage place and the indoor factory.

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Challenging struggle with the lack of means and creative solutions for the everyday needs inspired me to build homemade distiller and to produce moonshine in the space that I created. During post-soviet period many people were desperate because they had no work, no means and no future. From the cheap and unsuitable means they constructed homemade distillers for their own use and for sale. Moonshine home production provided the source of money or other necessary resources, which many times used to be a barter.

   My project relies on the memories of past. While being remote from my birthplace for many years, cultural images, heard stories and my own experiences impose on each other and influence me. Connecting the ends and reworking the potentials reveal the complexity of past and provide the ability to expand, shift and rethink the present.