One Day More: Unveiling of artwork for Ukraine’s collective memory in Brussels’ Citizens’ Garden

The artwork One Day More by Ukrainian writer and photographer Yevgenia Belorusets will be inaugurated in the Citizens’ Garden in the EU quarter on 6 September at 17.30.

Inspired by her diary entries depicting the effects of the Russian invasion on Ukraine’s people, the work was commissioned by Eunic Brussels and the European Cultural Foundation.

As someone who was born in Ukraine and lived there for most of her life, Yevgenia Belorusets has experienced many of the political upheavals over the past 30 years. Through many of her projects such as Victories of the Defeated, a retelling of the 2014 Donbas war, Belorusets has seen and described the devastating effects of these conflicts on Ukrainian towns and cities.

For A Wartime Diary, Belorusets began writing in Kharkiv in the northeast of the country on 24 February as Russian armed forces starting to invade. She continued to put pen to paper as the war raged on. Now her words have made their way to Brussels with the installation One Day More, a text inscribed on a surface of rusting iron.

The exhibit is a sign of collective memory and solidarity with the people of Ukraine. “In this war, the ruins of objects and cities will bear witness together with human beings. The surface of this object becomes rusted over: memory grows less distinct, but it does not vanish,” said Belorusets

The inauguration ceremony in Place Wiertz is open to the public. It begins with a welcome by Vice-President of the European Parliament Katarina Barley and ambassador Vsevolod Chentsov, head of mission of Ukraine to the EU.

A contribution follows by former Eunic Brussels president Laura Boxberg and Belorusets will be interviewed by director of the Pinchuk Ark Centre in Kyiv, Björn Geldhof. Music will be performed by Ukrainian violinist Tatiana Koichurenko-Vavilina and Roman Borkowsky on viola.

Photos: (main image) © European Union 2022 – Source: EP; Yevgenia Belorusets by Yao Tsy