Vika Begalska video does not conceal dark inspiration from the viewer… Filming it on January 2 in the neighborhood of the Kharkov Tractor Plant (KhTZ in Russian), the
artist makes the viewer feel the dark atmosphere of post-Christmas hangover. The main item in the agenda of the KhTZ residents is the waste bucket or, rather, taking it out. A line of retired persons with waste buckets and characters from the urban underworld exploring the content of garbage cans is not an accidental feature. There is an impression that this «waste of civilization» is loaded with specific meaning, and here Begalska is close to the Kabakov version of the Moscow Conceptualist tradition which regarded waste in all its variety — «dry and wet, or sticking together» — as a symbol of the social body, an unofficial, non-ideological context comprising various voices carrying the private perception of life by absolutely different people. The artist also examines the «waste» metaphor as a relationship between the human being and the government that sees people from KhTZ as expendable raw material, as waste…
Begalska doesn’t limit herself to the exposure of hateful reality. Throwing dirt on the video projected on the walls of the gallery until it is submerged by the black background, she tries to destroy the imperfect world, conjuring the «Absolute Nothing emerging in Malevich’s Black Square»… This Avant-Garde gesture is naive and sincere: instead of submitting to the dictatorship of the global art context, welcoming reality in its most boring manifestations and rejecting metaphysics repressed by the positivist mentality, the artist raises a metaphysical rebellion against reality…