Dana Kavelina
Letter to a Turtledove
Letter to a Turtledove by Dana Kavelina is a short film based on a poem written by the artist. Delivered as a monologue and presented with subtitles, the poem encapsulates the traumas, grievances, horrors, dreams, and hallucinations that have descended upon Ukraine’s Donbass region since its invasion by Russia in 2014. Appropriating amateur footage shot during the war in the Donbass region, Kavelina’s film weaves sound and image into a poignant tapestry that considers the absurdity of war. The footage is spliced with Kavelina’s own animated segments, staged mise-en-scène, and archival footage of the Donbass from the 1930s. Kavelina’s reimagining of old tropes is a surreal and powerful anti-war film-poem.
Originally conceived as a radio play, “Letter” actually refers to a radio signal, or call, addressed to a woman in the occupied territories. The film is an attempt to build an alternative optics through which to examine the conflict in Ukraine. It is an invitation to understand the war not through the lens of the “friend-enemy” paradigm, but through the “rapist-victim” dichotomy. While victimhood is typically understood as the confiscation or denial of one’s subjectivity, Kavelina’s film proposes victimhood as a status that possesses agency by absorbing and encapsulating violence.
Dana Kavelina is an artist and activist who works with video, animation, painting, illustration, and text. Through these mediums, Kavelina injects an artistic component into civic activism and protest. Her work considers vulnerability, personal and collective trauma, as well as historical and cultural perceptions of war that exceed conventional narratives. Her award-winning animated film About Mark Lvovich Tulpanov, Who Talked to Flowers (2017) depicts the events of the military conflict in Donbas, Ukraine through the lens of personal tragedies.