Failed to find the text #85

2022

This project is a Rubik’s Cube with QR codes on its faces, leading to six banned works of Russian literature in Ukraine. These codes cannot be scanned — they exist only as tactile relief, a reminder of the cultural voids created by political decisions. Each twist of the cube irreversibly disrupts possible combinations, making access to the texts increasingly illusory — just as language-ban laws gradually erase layers of shared cultural memory.

The object becomes a metaphor for the artist’s personal experience: a Russian-speaking native of southern Ukraine who faced the systemic suppression of her native language — from school reprimands in the 1990s for “wrong” literary preferences to book bans in 2022. The QR codes linking to Gogol’s “The Overcoat, ” Kuznetsov’s “Babi Yar, “ or Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” turn into cultural ciphers: physically tangible yet functionally useless, like knowledge of the Russian language in a 1990s Ukrainian school.

The Rubik’s Cube’s material form — a game requiring logic and patience — contrasts with the irrationality of language bans. After a few twists, restoring the original configuration becomes impossible — just as it’s impossible to reclaim the integrity of an education system stripped of entire literary layers. The project captures the moment when politics turns culture into an unsolvable puzzle and reading into a forbidden act.

The work offers no answers but poses a painful question: What remains of mutual understanding when a shared language loses its letters and shared literature — its pages? How does an “i, ” accidentally typed instead of an “и, ” become a symbol of irreversible identity transformation?

Nikolai Gogol 'The Overcoat' 

Vasily Bykov 'Alpine Ballad'

'Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber' 

Anatoly Kuznetsov 'Babi Yar' 

Mikhail Bulgakov 'Master and Margarita' 

Fyodor Dostoevsky 'Crime and Punishment'”