Oksana Pasaiko – the whole world – without me = the whole world

Oksana Pasaiko was een kunstenares afkomstig uit Roethenië, een historische regio ergens tussen het huidige Polen, Slowakije, Oekraïne en Roemenië. Waar ze precies vandaan kwam, is nooit met zekerheid vastgesteld en dat is geen toeval. Pasaiko koos er bewust voor om haar achtergrond grotendeels onduidelijk te houden. Ze wilde haar werk loskoppelen van haar biografie, alsof haar eigen verhaal ondergeschikt was aan datgene wat ze maakte. Over haar leven is dan ook weinig bekend. Ze werd geboren in 1982 en overleed op 29 mei 2025. Haar overlijden was onverwacht en laat een compact maar indringend oeuvre na.

Voor deze editie van Billboard Series presenteert Pasaiko nieuw werk waarvan de titel teruggrijpt naar de reeks postkaarten die ze sinds 2004 maakte: the whole world – without me = the whole world. Het billboard toont een foto van een muur waarop ze die zin schreef. Het is een droge vaststelling, bijna achteloos geformuleerd, en toch roept ze meteen vragen op. Gaat het hier om zelfrelativering of om een poging om herinnerd te worden? De kracht van de zin ligt precies in die dubbelzinnigheid. Ze lijkt zichzelf uit te willen wissen, maar doet dat in de vorm van een duidelijke aanwezigheid. De muur is niet leeg; Pasaiko’s woorden staan tussen andere tekens: restanten van graffiti, krabbels en namen waarvan we niet weten wie ze toebehoren. Ook zij maken deel uit van de stedelijke laag waarop Pasaiko zich inschrijft. Niet om geschiedenis te schrijven, maar om even aanwezig te zijn, om gezien te worden, misschien gewoon om niet vergeten te worden.

Wie het werk bekijkt vanop enige afstand, ziet een haast documentair beeld: een gewone stadsmuur, misschien wel de muur van 019 zelf. Maar wie dichterbij komt, merkt dat de foto opgebouwd is uit drukpunten, alsof het beeld enkel zichtbaar is dankzij een raster van kleine vlekken kleur. Wat in eerste instantie tastbaar lijkt, wordt bij nader inzien moeilijk te grijpen, alsof de materiële werkelijkheid hapert en het beeld voor onze neus verdwijnt.

Oksana Pasaiko werkte vaak met wat zich onttrekt aan het oog, met wat afwezig is maar toch voelbaar blijft. Ook hier is het gebaar klein, precies en geladen. In het licht van haar recente overlijden wordt het onvermijdelijk gelezen als een laatste boodschap, ook al lijkt het daar zelf niet naar te streven. Het weigert sentiment en laat ruimte voor interpretatie.

Oksana Pasaiko was an artist from Ruthenia, a historical region somewhere between today’s Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. Where she came from exactly was never certain, and that’s no coincidence. Pasaiko deliberately chose to keep her background unclear. She wanted to separate her work from her biography, as if her own story mattered less than what she made. Little is known about her life. She was born in 1982 and died recently, on 29 May 2025. Her passing was unexpected and leaves behind a compact yet powerful body of work. She rarely exhibited and kept her distance from public life. This was not out of doubt but out of conviction: she decided herself what could be seen and what would remain hidden. The works she did share were thoughtful, precise and poetic in their simplicity.

A key part of her practice is the long-running publication the whole world – without me = the whole world, a series of postcards she developed with Roma Publications since 2004. Each card shows one of her works. Together they form a concentrated insight into her way of thinking and making. Her works are rarely straightforward, and it is exactly that openness that makes them invite repeated viewing.

One card shows Short Sad Text (based on the borders of 14 countries). This work consists of a piece of soap in which Pasaiko marked existing borders with human hair – borders not shaped by rivers or mountains, but by historical and political conflicts. Of the first edition of two, one was left in a public toilet in Oslo, while the other entered the collection of S.M.A.K. Later versions were shown at the Kortrijk Triennial and at Museum M in Leuven. The choice of soap was deliberate: it refers to care, to attempts at washing something away, but also to what inevitably disappears. Pasaiko offers no solution here, but she does provide a way of approaching pain and absurdity.

Another postcard shows her work Correction (Mistero e malinconia di una strada, Giorgio de Chirico, 1914). This is a digital reworking of the famous painting by the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico. In Pasaiko’s version, the mysterious shadow behind the building has been removed. What at first seems a minor intervention has major consequences. By taking away the shadow, she also removes the threatening element that gave the painting its charged atmosphere. In doing so, Pasaiko questions whether the sense of mystery really lies within the image itself, or whether it is something we as viewers project onto it. She subtly undermines the authority of the original and raises broader questions about authorship, interpretation and the canon of art history.

Last year, in the Japanese city of Kanazawa, Pasaiko presented My Father As A Fax. The work shows a chair draped with a long printed fax: a letter to a father figure who is never addressed directly. By laying the fax across the chair, the text is given a body. The father’s absence becomes tangible through the words that gather around him. The work shows how Pasaiko, with care and indirection, manages to approach what is difficult to name. The letter is not a direct confrontation, but an attempt at closeness, written in a form that is both evasive and honest.

At first glance, Pasaiko’s oeuvre seems modest, but it unfolds as a carefully built form of poetry. Again and again, one theme returns: disappearance, absence, elusiveness. These are subtle strategies to give shape to what cannot be seen. What is missing becomes the space for imagination. Each time, she created her own reality through language, image and form, with an almost weightless precision.

For this edition of the Billboard Series, Oksana Pasaiko presents new work whose title recalls the postcard series mentioned earlier. The billboard shows a photo of a wall on which she wrote the words ‘the whole world – without me = the whole world’. It is a dry observation, almost casually phrased, and yet it immediately raises questions. Is it an act of self-effacement, or a way of seeking to be remembered? Its strength lies precisely in this ambiguity. She seems to erase herself, but does so through a clear mark of presence. By writing the words on the wall, she leaves her trace on the world she insists will continue perfectly well without her.

The wall is not empty; Pasaiko’s words appear among other signs. Traces of graffiti are visible, scribbles and names whose authors remain unknown. They are part of the urban layer in which Pasaiko inscribes herself. All are attempts to leave something behind in an environment that constantly changes. From prehistoric cave drawings to contemporary tags, the gesture remains the same: not to write history, but to assert presence, to be seen, perhaps simply not to be forgotten.

Seen from a distance, the work looks almost documentary: an ordinary city wall, perhaps even the wall of 019 itself. But up close, the photo reveals itself as a field of printed dots, a raster of tiny spots of colour. It is a classic printing technique, but here it strengthens the idea that this sentence – like its maker – is only temporarily visible. What first seems solid and graspable becomes elusive, as if the material world falters and the image dissolves before our eyes.

Oksana Pasaiko often worked with what escapes the eye, with what is absent yet still palpable. This gesture, too, is small, precise and charged. In the light of her recent death, it is inevitably read as a final message, even if it does not aim to be one. It resists sentimentality and leaves space for interpretation – exactly as Pasaiko always did.