In this conversation, we meet Oksana Pohrebennyk, a Ukrainian visual artist whose work flows between observation, material exploration, and poetic reflection.

Who are you? What was your practice like before joining the FOCUS INTERNATIONAL Ukraine program?

My name is Oksana Pohrebennyk and I am a visual artist from Ukraine.
I’m not sure if I can call it a “before and after” joining the residency. I see it more like a river current. Something had already begun to surface before the trip, a kind of need, something that was pushing me, like a hidden language I wanted to understand. During the residency, I could jump into it, come into contact with that current. And now I feel that I’m still there, diving into its remains.

What did you do throughout your residency?

I observe a lot. I took my time to understand where I was, especially coming from Ukraine. I needed time to adapt a bit.

At the beginning, I started filming my forest walks. It was spontaneous. I wanted to keep a kind of memory of my routine to share with friends, and to watch maybe in a few years, like a time capsule video.

I traveled with my luggage full of latex, but I’m not used to working with materials, sculpture, or installations. That was one of my main motivations, to get in contact with materials and to have a studio where I could run all the tests I wanted. I don’t have enough space at home, and I don’t have a studio in Ukraine. So having an opportunity like this was very precious. I felt like a kid in a playground.
I could work with latex and clay. I also worked with materials I found in the forest, like wood, bones, and the foam animal figures from the Bogenparcours.

I dived into that “river current” as much as I wanted, until I started grasping the hidden language that was there. I began to enter into a dialogue with the materials, with things that were already present. It was like following a stream that leads you to a waterfall. You simply jump into its depths.

How do you think you’ve affected the environment you’ve been in?

A lot. I mean, I am used to working with what’s there and what kind of dialogue begins to emerge from a specific place. I don’t know if I can call it situated art, but it takes something from that approach.

Being surrounded by mountains felt like a kind of game. I had the impression that the mountains were playing hide and seek with me. They were showing me that there are things behind them, and that they can also move or disappear through the fog and clouds.
There was also the city. Innsbruck was something different. My favorite activity was visiting the chess players in the park. I have no idea how to play chess, but I could spend one or two hours just observing how (mostly) men play it. It felt like a live performance. Again, chess is a “language” I don’t speak, but through observation, I could sense things.

Another of my rituals was visiting the bookshop called Wagner’sche. There is a section with books in English. I found one titled A Village Life by Louise Glück. Almost every time I passed by the shop, I would go in and read one or two poems. On the last day, I bought it. Now I feel that I can always come back to the Alps through her words.

What are you taking with you from the residency?

Probably the understanding that some processes need time, their own time. Usually, I observe a lot and then do things quickly. And if things don’t work that way, I tend to get frustrated. So here, I had to learn to observe differently, to give myself time in a different way, to come into contact with that language.

How do you feel about the artistic result of the residency? What is it?
There will be an exhibition I worked on at Grund 1535 on October 3, curated by Briggite Eggers and Anastasiia Daichenko. It will include some of the objects I created during the two-month residency, as well as a video art piece that I am still working on.

Stay tuned for more interviews with participants of FOCUS INTERNATIONAL Ukraine Program!