The Calamity Routines
The Sisyphus’ Happyness
I remember the feeling of utter absurdity at the beginning of 2020 when I got stuck at home in Ukraine, without so much of a promise that I would ever be able to board a plane again. We suddenly learned everything about the types of facemasks and started getting in line to enter the supermarket. One of those times, when my mother and I went out to get groceries, we heard a man who was not wearing a mask calling us “dogs”, because we were wearing “a muzzle” like “the obedient beasts” we were, and just like our “owner” told us. “Well”, my mother said, “disbelief is one way to deal with it”. I wonder where this man is now, and whether he is still alive. Truth be told, facemasks not only saved me from getting COVID-19 (I would eventually catch it, presumably, in the Parisian metro, right before Christmas, when the pandemic was already over), but even from seasonal flu. Once the facemasks, along with other restrictions, entered our daily lives, resistance sparked. The imagination of the conspiracy theorists ran wild in an attempt to explain the absurdity of the situation we were collectively enduring. Was it a bat someone had eaten? Was it a biological weapon that escaped the vigilant eye of the scientists? Or was it an inhumane experiment of an enormous scale, and we were just lab rats running through the maze?
One of the drawings I made in the lonely room of an empty Roman hotel. I thought we were trapped there forever, with the plague waiting right outside the door. Looking back, it feels like a vacation.
Sometimes I overhear the news about someone still working on figuring it out. The Covid pandemic gave us some things we would never obtain otherwise. Remote jobs became a thing, which changed the way we look at work in general, for instance. Personally, I learned to play tennis during the total lockdown, since my home is blessed with a tennis court right in front of it. I painted a lot, my overall artistic skills spiked significantly, because there was nothing else I could do to distract myself inside the four walls. I got an incredibly bizarre experience of living in an empty hotel in the centre of Rome, because my husband was working on a movie at the time, and I was allowed to travel with him.
The overall story of the Covid lockdown, however unbelievable, today is something I remember like a long pleasant vacation. For someone I know it was a nightmare, though. Those who lost loved ones, have not yet recovered. Complications from Covid made someone’s life an absolute hell, as far as I know. However, there is no doubt that it changed lives on a global scale, and pointed out the deficiencies in our daily endeavours. Before lockdowns began, routines were frowned upon in popular culture, they were considered something that ruined marriages and made people drown in alcohol, for instance. The Covid pandemic locked everyone on Earth inside their homes and communities, significantly limiting the options for daily activities while being a major stress-inducing factor. This is when it became obvious that routine is actually the healthiest coping mechanism to live through utterly ludicrous times.
For most Ukrainians today the dangers of the “plague” look like a nice afternoon walk in the woods, because the truly absurd reality dawned upon us in February 2022, when Russia decided to not hide their invasion anymore, like it happened in 2014 in Donbas and Crimea, and go on with a full-scale invasion. On February 24, we woke up to the news about the missiles hitting the centre of Kyiv. The world plunged into total chaos, at that precise moment.
““One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, he concludes, implying that the deceitful king must have found peace in the chaos of the world by committing himself to a repetitive task.”
Camus argued that life does not have a real purpose, and searching for it is an act of rebellion. In 1942, in the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus re-interpreted the famous Greek myth of a cunning king of Corinth who was condemned to push the boulder up the hill only to see it roll down every time, for eternity. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, he concludes, implying that the deceitful king must have found peace in the chaos of the world by committing himself to a repetitive task. In a way, Camus reinterpreted routine, giving it a positive turn, making it into an act of resilience against the turmoil of the world.[1]
Before the World Ends, I Shall Wash the Windows
What Camus insisted on is that the world does not present anyone with an inherent meaning of life. The Ukrainian wartime, however, is anything but senseless. The beginning of the invasion in 2022 was marked by a sort of social renaissance when unity and contribution to a common cause (defeating the Russian army, naturally) became the very purpose of life for many. Just like it was at the beginning of the Covid crisis: the novelty of the situation provided a seemingly unlimited source of adrenaline, but everything eventually wears out. A long war causes complicated wounds that struggle to heal because they are being continuously inflicted. The grotesque reality of war makes one get used to daily 5 am air raids because it might just be the only predictable thing in the overall mayhem. I have never been particularly passionate about Albert Camus, but we have to hand it to him: he realised early enough that absurdity and chaos were the true base of human existence, and everything one decides to do with their life is an act of rebellion. In other words, it is up to an individual to create meaning in their daily existence. Lucky are those who get the meaning served to them on a silver plate and who do not think too hard about whether the plate actually belongs to them.
“This is the ultimate visualisation of the search for normality at times that are anything but normal.”
Tania Bakum. Before the World Ends, I Shall Wash the Windows, bed linen, cyanotype. 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
When I saw the installation Before the World Ends, I Shall Wash the Windows by a Ukrainian artist Tania Bakum, I thought, this is it. This is the ultimate visualisation of the search for normality at times that are anything but normal. Imagine one of those courtyards in the middle of the urban maze. It is hard to say whether this space is considered interior or exterior in relation to the buildings around it. The silence inside of it is interrupted by the sounds of television, the gentle clinking of the plates, and voices, all flowing from the open windows that face the courtyard. The eventual fastidious revving of a motorbike outside the gate. Everything here is so normal and mundane that one occasionally begins dropping an ear on a neighbour’s domestic fight, out of curiosity and boredom. The residents use this space to their liking, for gardening, a quick smoke before entering their home (using a nameless tin can as an ashtray), or for drying the white linen bed sheets they kept from their grandparents' place.
Tania Bakum threw a laundry rope across this courtyard, hanging what might seem like the said bedsheets, but has been turned into a portal to the current Ukrainian reality. The white bed linen is most often associated with mundane domestic cosiness, safety and comfort, the smell of fresh fabric, and simple household rites, like washing windows before Easter or switching garments inside the wardrobe for the coming season. Tania’s bedsheets, though, present images of disaster: the visions of destroyed residential palaces, missing windows, walls, and entire apartments.
While photographing these sights in Kharkiv, Tania would eventually notice workers who painted over the black burnt walls with innocent white varnish. People would replace the dismembered windows and put wallpaper on the walls of their houses, they would clean their own little courtyards and hang the wet laundry. There is no guarantee that tomorrow (or a moment later) another missile will not target their home, destroying everything again.
Tania Bakum. Before the World Ends, I Shall Wash the Windows, bed linen, cyanotype. 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Tania Bakum. Before the World Ends, I Shall Wash the Windows, bed linen, cyanotype. 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
A commonplace sleepy courtyard in a Polish city is gazing straight at a neighbourhood that once was just as sleepy and tranquil. Now the sharp teeth and claws of the residential ruins transform it into a portal, where bed sheets play the role of a magnifying glass. A complex process of cyanotype transports the digital photographs onto the cotton. First, a chemical solution is applied to the textile, which then rests in a dark place for about 12 hours. The negative of a photograph then is applied to the dry cloth, pressed by the glass and placed under the UV light. After that, the solution is washed off with water, and the sheets are left to dry again. The biggest canvas had to be placed under the lamps eight times to get a homogeneous image. The very process of creation is a meticulous work of repetition: step by step to obtain a clearer vision for a disaster to be visible in the tiniest detail.
Hanging Painting, June 1972 in 'Invitation to Read as an Indication of What There Is to See'," [gallery] Sperone, Rome, Italy.
Such a format of installation is hardly new for contemporary art: in the early 70s, Daniel Buren started installing his iconic striped textile in the historical European courtyards. He named them “Peinture-Sculture” (Painting-sculpture), suggesting his work possesses the qualities of both mediums. He insisted on creating an artwork that would fit the very place where it is being installed, transforming its essence. However, while Buren’s work is an example of an institutional critique that tries to lure the art out of the museum’s walls, the accent on the place where it is being installed is the key to reading the artwork.
“The artist here is a keen observer, powerful enough to translate her findings into a poignant work of public art, both mystical for its ritualistic reference, and striking for its straightforward truthfulness.”
In the same way, Tania Bakum’s bed linen, installed in the safe and calm environment of a Polish town is powerful enough to turn the location into a war site. Just like Buren played with the contrast between the regular lines of his textile and the uneven environment of the urban backdrop, Tania’s work is about the evident contradictions between war and peace, safety and danger, routine and chaos.
The inhabitants of the sites Tania captured are following Sisyphus’ steps, pushing their boulders up the hill, without any certainty about what to do with them later. For them, the routine is the only way to harness the grotesque reality they are living. In an act of rebellion and resilience, they will wash those scattered windows before Easter, and put up that wallpaper, doing their best to cover the signs of a disaster. The artist here is a keen observer, powerful enough to translate her findings into a poignant work of public art, both mystical for its ritualistic reference, and striking for its straightforward truthfulness.
[1] Camus, A. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays (J. O'Brien, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1942; Translation originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1955)
