Inherited silences

Inherited Silences is a group exhibition by Alyona Hrekova, Elzara Oiseau, Katya Vavrynchuk, Masha Silchenko and Viktoria Tabone that brings together artistic works dealing with memory, grief, and transgenerational trauma in Eastern European and post-Soviet contexts. The exhibition traces different understandings of how personal stories and collective histories are shaped by displacement, loss, and survival, and how these experiences are carried across generations. Selected works engage with archives not as complete or authoritative records, but as fragmented and vulnerable structures shaped by interruption, erasure, and absence. In this sense, missing documents, silences, and gaps become central points of artistic inquiry rather than obstacles.

Across ceramics, paintings, installation, and participatory practices, the exhibition explores how memory is stored besides the obvious ways of understanding - in our bodies, gestures, and everyday rituals. Discovering the connection to our home and our ancestors, we wonder: Can we reinvent the relationships with the inherited grief? Can we learn to look at the past and pain? Can we (re)learn to mourn? Can we find beauty in displacement and can we find roots in it?

With the belief of sharing and connectivity, Inherited Silences aims to create a space in which experiences of grief and mourning can be shared, reflected upon, and held collectively.

Attempt Studio, Stationsstrasse 21, 8003 Zürich

Dates: 02.–09.04.2026

02.04 (thursday): Vernissage

03.–05.04: Ausstellung open

05.04: Workshop „Body Archives“

09.04 (thursday): Finissage