Angelic performance

Poetry reading by Maryna Ponomarenko, harpsichord performance by Varvara Turta.

Composer Sofia Baibakova, concept author and costume designer Bohdan Polishchuk.

***

If Peter Bruegel had lived in Troyeshchyna

I would wake up in the morning and have my mother-in-law's stuffed cabbage rolls for breakfast.

I would snack on pickled cucumbers or sour cherries.

I looked out the window. I saw hunters going out into the snow.

They are so bristly, sleepy, confused

They walk through courtyards surrounded by Babylonian towers

They walk as if in a religious procession and push their way onto buses.

Peter thinks, "This is worthy of painting."

In Peter's kitchen — a stray dog and mountains of dirty dishes

Peter has a morning chat with the Lord,

He says something like:"Lord, look upon me, foolish and prematurely grey-haired

Did you really conceive of this world with housing estates?

With these stray dogs and noisy neighbours?

Did you really conceive people as empty-eyed, drunk, and satiated?

Did you really invent this food seasoned with monosodium glutamate?

Lord, should I not have been born somewhere in Flanders?

Peter dreamed again of Antwerp and windmills above the marshes.

Peter cried in his sleep over his unlived life and unpainted canvases.

But now he drinks tea and is not so afraid of the future.

Ultimately, people are pretty much the same — in Flanders and in Troyeshchyna.

And everything seems fine, except for the wallpaper with pink asters on the wall.

The Triumph of Death by an unknown artist is on display.

Maryna Ponomarenko

📸Photographs by Khrystyna Korol

🔶 Lviv Quadriennale of Scenography 2025

🗓 When:  28 September 18:30 – 19:00

📍Location:  Art Centre Gallery "Dzyga", 35 Virmenska Street