Ukrainian Artist's Exhibition in Tallinn Explores Violence in Everyday Life

On Thursday, Berlin-based Ukrainian artist Yeva Sihachova opened a new exhibition at Tallinn's Okapi Gallery, titled "I hate violence and I see it everywhere." The exhibition examines how violence permeates daily existence, not only in war or catastrophe but in the ordinary choreography of living alongside others.

The show delves into the ontology of violence: where it resides, how it manifests, what language it speaks, where it is born, and what it eventually transforms into. Sihachova describes violence as something that can reshape the body over time, normalizing pain through adaptation and repetition, leaving no room for resistance.

"I see how, through force, it restructures culture, embedding itself across generations as trauma," she said in a statement. Curated by Ilja Jakovlev, the works explore moments when violence can appear before it is fully visible or named, focusing on repetition, pressure, fixation, the normalization of discomfort, adaptation as a survival mechanism, and the unstable distance between bodies.

The exhibition repeatedly returns to questions of connection, suggesting that violence may begin in attempts to fix, define, or overcome distance between people. Rather than offering a fixed definition, the works trace how violence quietly enters everyday life, reorganizing proximity, settling into ordinary forms of coexistence, and reshaping how people exist alongside one another.

Sihachova works across performance, conceptual sculpture, printmaking, and video, often linking personal experience with broader questions of home, identity, the human body, and nature. The exhibition will remain open at Okapi Gallery through July 19.