Anastasiia

She folds her memories like a parachute

I mentored Christian van der Kooy towards a final version of his project Anastasiia, She folds her memories like a parachute (2018) I took care of the book edit and advised van der Kooy in his creative process (?).

Anastasiia is a declaration of love, from a Kyivan student to her foreign lover and her native land, Ukraine. Through parallel streams of documentary photographs, Skype-screenshots and texts, a dialogue between Anastasiia and her lover, photographer Christian van der Kooy, is reconstructed. The photo book covers a period of two years. Anastasiia’s poetical narrative is above all a fictional interpretation and exploration of her everyday life and a reflection on intimacy in times of the Russian annexation and information warfare.

Van der Kooy depicts the relationship between Anastasiia and her surroundings – she is rooted in the landscape and the landscape in her. By conveying her memories, Anastasiia’s narrative sheds its very own light on the landscape by opening up new perspectives, and by demonstrating the creative way Ukrainian people deal with recent events in Kyiv, Odessa and Crimea.

In the current Ukrainian geopolitical discourse there is an urgent need to define and reflect on the cultural identity that embraces the mind-set of the generation born after independence (1991). With Anastasiia, Van der Kooy aims to contribute to this understanding, and invites to reimagine; to see in different ways.