KIOSK presents on the occasion of the group exhibition STRESS TEST. On Fathers, Fatherhood and Fathering a selection of texts written by Olha Hruba around the themes of the exhibition.

What if…

What if my grandfather simply arrived,

after not visiting me for more than thirty-five years,

stood at the door, said hello — Privet, in Russian —

and smiled after a long journey.

What if he sat down for a while

on a chair in the living room,

looked around.

What is this drawing about?

A woman with two heads.

This is the truth, I would answer.

And why does one head have no eyes, while the other hangs behind

her like a backpack, smiling with a kind of calm and contentment?

I don’t know, I would say. I don’t understand what the snake

behind her means either, or the other one coming out of the first

head’s mouth.

He would fall silent, keep looking for a while, and then turn away

without saying anything.

What if he taught me how to drive,

fixed the leaking toilet,replaced the shower,

put together the IKEA bed?

What if he watched the news and realised that he had served in the

wrong army his entire life?

Then he would simply shake his head, tears in his eyes, and stand

up.

He would say that everything would be all right,

give me a few pieces of advice for the future,

and then hug me so warmly

that the warmth would enter every cell of my body.

And then he would say goodbye.

What if he simply got on his bicycle

and cycled back?

Game

focus on the divine, important.

muscles and testosterone

running in every direction.

goal!

packed stands, crying children,

and me alone with my bitterness.

never mind. it will pass.

I’m invisible.

door locked, curtains closed.

my mother thinks I’m doing homework.

on my screen there are boys without faces

asking each other things at night

that we would never say out loud during the day.

the first one to get scared loses.

the one who goes furthest wins.

I win more and more often.

pass, pass the ball to Lukaku!

he’ll know what to do with it.

in general I don’t know what to do, or what not to do.

I’m stuck in unlimited possibilities with no options.

looking at the grass instead of the sky.

locking myself in a golden cage sponsored by Dove and Motorola.

where to run? what for?

two goals, one ball, lots of men.

clear roles, clear boundaries, clear divisions.

the whole world is watching:

are you playing well,

are you running fast enough,

are you going to score?

goal!

the spectators watch from above.

the sky watches.

the ground carries us.if you have only one goal in life - to score —

then life must be fucking easy.

then life must be a kind of meditation.

we were given muscles to use,

and some people use them to the limit,

do things with them that seem impossible.

does the sky have limits?

imagine that you and I play a game.

if you win, I write my surname on the wall in my blood

and send you a photo. if I win, you hang yourself while filming

it,

and I send the video to your parents.

goal!

Family Relations

My father is an asshole. Who am I? The daughter of an asshole. The

favourite daughter of an asshole. He has a second daughter he has

never spoken to, not even when she tried to find him.

My father’s father was an asshole too. All those generations of

assholes producing new generations of assholes.

My great-grandmother was the mistress of a Kyrgyz military officer

— a putain, then. And my mother had an affair with a big black man

in New York while she was married, and she left home for three

years.

They never told me any of these things. I heard them from a

neighbour in the town I come from in Ukraine.

Dear Parents

Dear parents, I have always loved you because we kept enough

distance from each other.

“dead”

Roman has known the word “dead” for a few months now.

Today he pointed at the mark left by a dead mosquito on the wall

and said “dead”

. It is strange to hear this word coming from the

mouth of a three-year-old child.

There are many dead mosquitoes on our walls. The marks have been

there for months and we still haven’t cleaned them because it isnot that important to us. The ceiling in our bedroom is covered

with the blood and corpses of dozens of mosquitoes.

Hearing the word dead from my son feels strange; seeing mosquito

blood on the wall does not.

Reading a newspaper feels like looking at walls covered in the

blood of dead mosquitoes.

Everything under control

“Not urgent. You can listen to this anytime before the end of

September.

Hi Peter. I’m alone now. Some guests left a few minutes ago. It was

unusual for me to invite someone to my flat. Usually, solitude is

part of the household furniture.

In four days — in several dozen hours and several million minutes —

I will be surrounded by other people day and night, every minute,

every day, every week, for a whole month at least, though I hope not

longer than three.

My guess is that they have already started planning this thing: when

you come to observe beautiful naked people, they dance and perform

with energy, usually erotic energy.

So hopefully, by the end of December, I will return to this

apartment, the one I am recording this voice message from.

Everything is good. I have a one-metre-long list of things I

consider worth taking with me, and almost everything is done.

Everything is under control.

Actually, I think “under control” is more appropriate than saying

that something is good or bad. Good and bad are so much a matter of

opinion, influenced by so many butterfly effects that it is

impossible even to estimate their number.

And yeah. I’m good.

the army)

” (text message sent by a friend before he joined