Ukraine (AP) — Moscow calls the detention center under construction near the Russian border a "fascist concentration camp." Inside the barbed-wire fences Our conversation with Alevtyna is a virtual dialogue with Perjovschi and a continuation of the artist’s longstanding practice of employing art to tell about what is happening in Ukraine and what the artist’s own family is going through we discussed his drawings about Ukraine at documenta 15 You criticized those works and even suggested some edits What are your thoughts on Perjovschi’s practice today and we’ve come to the point where we’re going to try to collaborate.Alevtyna Kakhidze when he proclaims in his drawings that he only wants to help refugees I know that the number of refugees will correlate with the duration of the war The refugees exist because the aggressor makes it impossible for people to stay in their homes Perjovschi also says in his drawings that this is “Putin’s war.” This cliche often appears in the Western media It’s not very difficult to understand what’s wrong with it When we emphasize that this is Putin’s war and weight to a person who also has two legs and it’s easier to write than “Russian-Ukrainian war.” The latter requires using more words “I’m against the war,” “Putin’s war” are too simple words for me being truly radical in your thinking means to ask: How to prevent the war How to end it?Drawing by Alevtyna Kakhidze From the Signs of Peaceful Life exhibition at the Meyer Riegger Gallery Photo courtesy of the gallery.What have you been doing since February 24 I’ve got more work. It seems that everyone who knew me wrote and asked for something, to draw or show something. I traveled a lot and talked about what I knew and felt. For example, I did a performance at Centre Pompidou in Paris where I answered questions that Ukrainians are often being asked and the work was called The Method of Constructing Political Truth.  I did this exhibition at the invitation of a commercial gallery They wanted to integrate me into the Western context this way I worked with a fantastic team at the gallery and felt a lot of support There was no pressure on what kind of work to show I decided to tell about myself and what kind of artist I was before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war So I showed my old project about consumerist society: about shop windows and beautiful commodities that I loved very much I talked about my desire to possess them and my lack of readiness for these fantastic Western goods And I finished with the story of how those shop windows “got scared” during the Maidan Revolution Although everyone on the Maidan was incomprehensibly polite I think that Sanahunt’s windows (a luxury boutique in the center of Kyiv that preemptively covered their windows with wooden panels during the Maidan Revolution in 2014 — ed.) were covered not because of people’s [aggressiveness] but because the physical objects (stones) don’t care what to hit That was the first time I made the work from the frightened shop windows series So that people there could see exactly what we were fighting with on Maidan This work seems to be wrapped in a piece of time One of them is dedicated to refugees: Ukrainians stand by a lake with foreigners and look at swans and Ukrainians are looking into their phones reading the news.Drawing by Alevtyna Kakhidze Photo courtesy of the gallery.Drawing by Alevtyna Kakhidze Photo courtesy of the gallery.How did the public respond to the exhibition One day I walked into the hall and saw two girls looking at it They were carefully watching a video of a performance in Perm (The Most Commercial Project performance as part of the Якщо/Если/If exhibition at the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art – ed.) Somehow I immediately realized that those girls were Russian When I approached them to discuss the drawings And then I realized that they were afraid of me What are your thoughts on working with Russians I received a call from Kasper Könning while I was looking at Lenin Square in Donetsk I went there with a desire to talk about our politics but now it’s clear that in the Russian context this resulted in disgust with Russians — all of them I was taken to the police station because of my project with teenagers called Cartography of Dreams And a Moscow cameraman who filmed me at the 6th Moscow Biennale later sent me a private message with a video of my native city of Zhdanivka “Everything is calm in Zhdanivka.” My mother lived there then which was the source of enormous anxiety for me until her last days It was this experience that would become decisive in my relationship with Russia and Russians although there were many other signs that revealed the imperialism and hostility of the Russians in the Manifesta 10 team like the “mistranslation” of my bio in the catalog where they called me: “ethnically and culturally Russian.”Signs of Peaceful Life exhibition display at the Meyer Riegger Gallery Photo courtesy of the gallery.How do you envision the presentation of your work on international platforms today What is the most important thing for you to convey to the public To read more articles about contemporary art please support Artslooker on Patreon Write to editors@artslooker.com if you find errors notice copyright infringement or want to submit materials for publication Arguments break out as people try to push in Some of those queuing are more than 80 years old Most don’t eat or drink for fear they will need the toilet but because they might lose their place in the queue This is one of the checkpoints at Ukraine’s front line About 30,000 civilians cross the contact line every day People are dying here!” one of the women queuing says to me have collapsed and died crossing the front line since December the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) reported in April Most of the deaths were from heart-related complications Some are crossing the front line to visit family But most are waiting to carry out a laborious I decide to travel to the front line to find out more There are five checkpoints on the Russian-backed eastern territories - four in Donetsk region and one in Luhansk region and five corresponding checkpoints on the Ukrainian-controlled side The queue moves slowly as permits are checked on either side of the front line Between the checkpoints is a walk of up to 3km (1.9 miles) across the contact line It is mined on both sides and a curfew on shelling during daylight hours is not always observed But statistics suggest another big and unexpected risk - the sheer exhaustion of queuing paramedic Natalia Sylkina is struggling to cope She explains that she and her colleagues are bringing people out of the queues who have already fainted They can’t breathe… We’ve been raising or lowering their blood pressure here or resuscitating them.” I discover that those who are 80 and over can actually go straight to the front of the queue or don’t believe it when I tell them - so fearful are they of losing their place I also travel to another crossing point - Mayorsk Despite the curfew on shelling I hear the sound of gunfire and the army tells me to take cover and crossing to see family on the other side I'm scared that I might have to give birth on the way," she says most of those queuing in Mayorsk are elderly This checkpoint has particular significance for Alevtina Kakhidze It was the checkpoint her mother was heading for a few days after their last conversation She lives in the north of the country; while her 70-year-old mother Liudmila lived in Zhdanivka in the eastern region controlled by Russian-backed fighters It was very difficult for them to meet but they spoke most days on the phone Alevtina drew pictures of her mother’s anecdotes - a way for her to envisage Liudmila’s daily life in a conflict zone She created a Facebook page for the pictures and they became popular amongst those in Ukraine hungry for news about the breakaway territories Alevtina was expecting a call from her mother “A woman whose phone I’m calling from has died,” he said simply “I didn’t know what to think - whether it was even true.” She asked the man to call her back later when she had been able to process the news Since he had introduced himself as a separatist fighter She knew that her mother had been planning to travel to the front line that week On 16 January Liudmila had got up at 04:30 to start this gruelling process These trips were made in inhuman conditions It took her about 11 hours to reach Ukraine-controlled territory That could only be done on government-held territory So once through Mayorsk checkpoint on the Ukraine-controlled side she would have headed to the town of Bakhmut Alevtina and I travelled there to see it for ourselves Bakhmut used to be an undeveloped backwater but now it throngs with people who have crossed the front line from Ukraine’s east or who are waiting to return from the west Dozens of businesses have sprung up - shops selling provisions and books for the journey across the front line; entrepreneurs running minibuses to ferry people right up to the checkpoint The queues that began at the checkpoints continue here at the banks and the ATMs There are many elderly people like Liudmila who have embarked on the same laborious journey for the same reason - to either collect their pension or to ensure the much needed money isn’t taken away from them For Ukrainian nationals living in the territories controlled by Russian-backed fighters claiming your state pension is not a simple process Ukrainian banks don’t operate on the breakaway territory And in order to qualify for them you need to pretend you actually live in a Ukrainian-controlled area And then you have to be ready for someone to knock on the door of that property every 60 days to check if you really do live there Except that knock might not come on Day 60 - it might come on Day 58 or 59 many rely on a local friend to ring ahead and warn them the authorities are in the area Liudmila had originally planned to travel a couple of days later than she actually did So Alevtina thinks she must have received such a phone call to warn her and rushed to bring her travel plans forward was also eligible for another pension - from the Russian-backed authorities even when supplemented by the money she earned selling vegetables giving her an additional $65 [£50] a month The journey is so difficult and slow that not everyone can make it across and back in 24 hours Alevtina’s mother could have stayed with friends But some have to stay in a hostel overnight - an added expense and from what I saw from the one I visited in Bakhmut Alevtina says she could have given her mother the equivalent of her pension But she knew Liudmila would be too proud to take it She says her mother fiercely guarded her independence and felt it was her moral right to claim the money owed to her Liudmila fell ill on a bus as she neared the final checkpoint manned by the Russian-backed militia “Somebody tried to help her; she was put into a shelter on the front line No-one knows what she died from but her daughter believes the strain of the journey had taken its toll It took two days for Liudmila’s elderly neighbours to go and identify her Alevtina’s high profile in the country made it too risky for her to cross over to the territories held by the Russian-backed fighters “I made dozens of calls to the emergency services the authorities and the secret service,” she tells me my mum arrived in our village… And we buried her.” Human rights campaigners argue that the queues would be eased if the Ukrainian government worked harder to simplify the pension system for those living in the breakaway territories says it tried to open an additional checkpoint to ease the queues but the Russian-backed forces wouldn’t agree to it But the authorities are also accused by rights groups of making it deliberately difficult in order to deter claimants About 62.2bn hryvnias [$2.4bn] worth of pensions went unclaimed between August 2014 and September 2018 according to the Ukrainian NGO Right to Protection which shared an official letter from the Ukrainian Pension Fund with the BBC Ukraine’s minister of social policy questioned whether those living in the areas controlled by Russian-backed fighters should be claiming state pensions in the first place and those who want to claim pensions on both sides have to put up with [the conditions],” Andriy Reva said in the report broadcast last month He said some residents there had helped perpetuate the fighting by allowing the Russian-backed separatists to use them as human shields I feel pity for [the] soldiers and officers Mr Reva’s comments created waves across Ukrainian society with some MPs even calling for his resignation Human rights activists argue that the civilians should be seen as hostages of war Mr Reva added that the priority was to end the fighting “The main option to prevent those people from suffering is to stop the war And to stop it - the occupiers must get out of the territory of Ukraine and that’s it But even the first point [of the agreement] - the ceasefire - the gangsters do not fulfil Because Moscow does not set them such a task.” Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky has also said he wants to end the fighting “Our first task is to achieve a ceasefire in Donbas,” he said during his inauguration address on 20 May He has stated that Ukraine must “give a hand” to those living in the occupied territories As a political novice - Mr Zelensky is best known for starring in a satirical TV series in which his character accidentally becomes president - it is not yet clear how much will change under him His campaign did not focus on any concrete policy proposals a clear message to former incumbent Petro Poroshenko that Ukraine’s electorate is frustrated The conflict began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea to the south Russian-backed fighters then seized Luhansk and Donetsk - the Donbas region - in the east Both Crimea and Donbas are strategic and symbolic gains for Russia Annexing Crimea gives Russia better control of the Black Sea with its deposits of natural gas and Donbas is home to most of Ukraine’s coal mines Ukraine describes the conflict as a “Russian invasion” Western governments accuse Russia of helping the separatists in the region with regular troops and heavy weapons while admitting that Russian “volunteers” are helping the separatists Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree making it easier for those living in Donbas and Crimea to get a Russian passport calling on the international community to react with sanctions A ceasefire in eastern Ukraine was declared in 2015 but is regularly broken by both sides The fighting has killed around 13,000 people Three thousand of them have been civilians the town Liudmila was heading for on her ill-fated final journey His university is called Horlivka’s Institute of Foreign Languages But confusingly it is no longer based in Horlivka After that town - 40km (25 miles) away - fell to the Russian-backed fighters in 2014 part of the university decided to move into Ukraine-controlled territory Denis says he has also moved from his hometown of Horlivka to Bakhmut “When you don’t see any future there… you see only one option: to run away somewhere where at least there is a chance for a future.” On one of the walls inside the university is a mural of a woman trying to cross the front line “It was made by a famous Ukrainian artist,” says Denis We are so lucky that she chose our town for her work I helped a bit with that project - she brought so much inspiration.” Denis now organises art events for local young people which attract youngsters not only from Bakhmut but sometimes from the territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists His aim is to give visitors a global perspective on the conflict - many of those coming to the events have never left their home town He hopes the projects will break down boundaries Alevtina continues to update the Facebook page she created for her pictures about her mother The page is full of line drawings of the day-to-day challenges Liudmila faced in Zhdanivka and sold her produce to supplement her pension But even gardening is fraught with risk in a war zone “I’ve been carrying tomatoes today through the veggie garden and thinking: ‘What if the shelling starts right now Where will I hide with my tomatoes?’” she told Alevtina on the phone Alevtina says she regularly tried to persuade her mother to leave eastern Ukraine for safety “What did I do wrong that I must escape?” she would say to her daughter “Should all my life now go down the drain just because of that so called ‘new republic?’” This site is optimised for modern web browsers and does not fully support your version of Internet Explorer.