Exhibit narrative
The permanent exhibit of the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide is to be a substantive complement to its memorial part, the Hall of Memory. It is to provide an insight into the Holodomor, the crime of genocide of the Ukrainian nation, committed by the occupation Communist regime, and at the same time to demonstrate Ukrainians’ fight for life. Decades of continuous fight for freedom in fact contributed to the collapse of the Communist empire, on whose ruins appeared independent Ukraine. In spite of the intent to turn the people into a denationalised urban and rural proletariat, an obedient mass of regime thralls, Ukrainians withstood, vanquished, and evolved into the modern political nation.
Numbers usually speak for the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind. We will try leading this discourse from the field of statistics and into human dimension. For lack of documentary sources and artefacts, which the Soviet regime was deliberately destroying throughout its lifetime, oral history is the main source of insights into the history of genocide of the Ukrainian people, the 1932-1933 Holodomor. This is verbal communication which will be a guide amid the extensive narrative regarding the Holodomor in the museum exhibit. Because this is human voice which allows one expressing their thoughts, communicating with people, persuading, and asserting their views. Physically insignificant, the sound energy of voice can transform into a raging emotional eruption, when a word becomes a key to cognition, enraptures, impresses and appals.
Eyewitnesses’ accounts and our contemporaries’ reflections — human voices in the exhibit — are to become continuation of the unique architecture of the Holodomor Museum building as the truth, which was concealed and silenced down but has come out to light.
The exhibit is to be structured after the layering fashion, from global to personal, where we will give pride of place to local history and personal experience. The beginning and the ending of the exhibit, where voices of witnesses and their descendants sound in turn, as though engaging in a dialogue, are to be of importance. Identifying oneself with witnesses of historical events and as if following their prompting voices, the visitor will be able to get immersed into the atmosphere of that time and look for answers to the questions: ‘Why the Holodomor was possible?’, ‘How was the genocide orchestrated?’, ‘How to survive?’, ‘Why this is important to remember?’ and ‘What can we do for such a crime to occur never again?’.
Designer group
international companies Nizio Design International (Warsaw, Poland) and Haley Sharpe Design (Great Britain), which are working on a design project for the Main Exhibition of the Holodomor Museum (Contract for provision of services to produce the Main Exhibition Design for the Holodomor Holodomor-Genocide Museum between Charitable Organisation ‘Holodomor Museum International Foundation’ and Haley Sharpe Design LTD, Nizio Design International).
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