For artist Daria Sazanovich, the legacy of Charnobyl is not only historical — it is deeply personal. As a child, she spent summers in northern Italy through humanitarian programs created after the 1986 disaster, initiatives that offered Belarusian children recovery, care, and their first encounter with life beyond the post-Soviet world.
These experiences shaped an entire generation. For many children, travel abroad became a turning point: a chance to learn new languages, imagine different futures, and form new understandings of identity and belonging.
In her work Plush Atoms, Sazanovich reflects on this intersection of catastrophe, childhood, and memory. Using archival footage from 1996 showing children arriving in Italy a decade after the disaster, she explores how Charnobyl continued to influence mobility, intimacy, and everyday life long after the initial event.
Alongside the video, she presents oversized plush sculptures inspired by toys produced in Zhlobin, Belarus — objects tied to informal survival economies of the 1990s. Soft, bright, and slightly grotesque, the sculptures transform the scientific symbol of the atom into something tactile and domestic, revealing how trauma becomes woven into the emotional texture of childhood.
Rather than portraying Charnobyl as a closed historical moment, Sazanovich reveals it as an invisible structure that quietly shaped lives, relationships, and futures across generations.
The opening exhibition ‚Half-Life: 40 Years After Chernobyl — The Belarusian Fallout’. Thank you to everyone who came and shared this moment with us
Join us on 26 April at 5 p.m. for a lecture on ‚Blutkreislauf’ by @cimafiejeva
and on 30 April at 7 p.m. for a lecture on ‚Cloud Count’ by Oxana Gourinovitch
The exhibition open until 15 May, 12–6 pm
UQ-BAR-A-BA
📍Schwedenstraße 16, 13357 Wedding, Berlin
#exhibitionview #installationart #contemporaryart #artopening #charnobyl #chornobyl #chernobyl #sculpture #radiation #liquidator #berlinexhibitions #anthropocene #nuclear #postnuclear #atomicage
We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening “Half-Life: 40 Years After Charnobyl — The Belarusian Fallout” opens. The project of contemporary art brings together artists from Belarus who were born after the Charnobyl disaster and whose lives and artistic experiences have been shaped by its long-term consequences.
The curatorial concept draws on the notion of “half-life” as a metaphor for the prolonged impact of the catastrophe on memory, bodies, and identity. Through installations, video works, and artistic objects, the project explores how Charnobyl continues to exist in personal stories, collective memory, and the cultural imagination.
The exhibition creates a space for critical reflection on the disaster and highlights the Belarusian perspective within the contemporary geopolitical context.
Artists:
Uladzimir Hramovich
Daria Sazanovich
Yuliya Tsviatkova
Kristina Satsina
Lesia Pcholka
Parallel program:
Julia Cimafiejeva
Oxana Gurinovitch
Opening 24th April 18:00
daily open from 12:00 - 18:00
Uq-Bar-A-Ba
Schwedenstr. 16
13357 Berlin
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Founded by the European Union.
Art Power Belarus
Daria Sazanovich (b. 1990) is a Belarusian-born, Germany-based multidisciplinary artist. Graduated with a Master of Arts in Digital Media from Hochschule für Künste Bremen (HfK Bremen), currently based in Dresden. Her practice addresses themes of power abuse, paganistic elements, oppression, and apocalyptic scenarios through a playful and humorous approach. Working across a broad range of media from crochet to AI, Sazanovich creates work that challenges serious subject matter with accessible, lighthearted methodologies.
For the exhibition, she presents a new work reflecting on growing up in Belarus after Charnobyl - where the disaster became a constant background, shaping everything quietly, like radiation itself.
The work is accompanied by archival video footage from the artist’s first trip to Italy as a Bambina di Charnobyl, recorded in 1996.
On April 24 in Berlin, the exhibition “Half-Life: 40 Years After Charnobyl — The Belarusian Fallout” opens. The project of contemporary art brings together artists from Belarus who were born after the Charnobyl disaster and whose lives and artistic experiences have been shaped by its long-term consequences.
The curatorial concept draws on the notion of “half-life” as a metaphor for the prolonged impact of the catastrophe on memory, bodies, and identity. Through installations, video works, and artistic objects, the project explores how Charnobyl continues to exist in personal stories, collective memory, and the cultural imagination.
The exhibition creates a space for critical reflection on the disaster and highlights the Belarusian perspective within the contemporary geopolitical context.
Artists:
Uladzimir Hramovich
Daria Sazanovich
Yuliya Tsviatkova
Kristina Satsina
Lesia Pcholka
Parallel program:
Julia Cimafiejeva
Oxana Gurinovitch
📍UQ-BAR-A-BA
Schwedenstraße 16, 13357 Wedding, Berlin
🗓 Opening: 24 April at 18:00
On view: till 15 May (12-6 pm)
@hramnica@sheeborshee@plus0.001@lestvoidom@cimafiejeva
