On 26 February 2024, the exhibition project "Alive" was officially opened on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day by contemporary Ukrainian artists at the Living Memory Exhibition Centre of the Babyn Yar National Historical and Memorial Reserve.

Cultural figures, artists, representatives of diplomatic missions, government officials, concerned Kyiv residents and guests of the capital came to honour the memory of more than 6 million Holocaust victims, 1,500 of whom were killed on the territory of modern Ukraine, and more than 100,000 executed by the Nazis at Babyn Yar.

In the exhibition project "Live", two contemporary Ukrainian artists, Matvii Vaisberg and Oleksandr Zhyvotkov, each in their own stylistic manner, recreate the horrors of the past and present in the language of art. Matviy Weisberg's paintings "Bird over Birkenau" and "Jewish Cemetery in Berdychiv" remind us of the grief of the Jewish people, while Oleksandr Zhyvotkov's reliefs convey the contemporary tragedy of Ukraine, which is confronting Russian barbarism.

The artists do not leave us alone in the face of the trials of terrible times. Amidst the darkness and despair, the primordial myth of the creation of the world emerges. The Seven Days series (1999) by Matvey Weisberg is based on the text of the Book of Genesis and the iconography of the Sarajevo Haggadah (an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century), "matzevot" - Jewish tombstones. Oleksandr Zhyvotkov's monumental relief Creation of the World was started before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and only two years later the artist was able to complete his work in the hope that the war would end.

The exhibition also features documentary video archives of the tragic consequences of the Holocaust in Ukraine and the video work War by director Oleg Sosnov, photographer Oleksandr Glyadyelov and composer Anton Baibakov, based on the chronicle of the first year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The eerie footage, shot immediately after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region, is not much different from the footage that went viral 78 years ago.

"Live is a contemporary confession about the importance of remembering, learning and acting to ensure that the darkest pages of history never happen again.