Nadia Kaabi-Linke produced this video installation specifically for the exhibition Seeing Without Light. It was shot in West Ukraine in March 2023, one year after the full-scale Russian invasion. The artist filmed in two specific sites, each representing an episode of violence from the Second World War period (1939–1945). The first one took place in the forest Chornyi Lis, where Soviet troops shot and buried hundreds of prisoners interned at the local headquarters of the NKVD (Soviet Interior Ministry and secret police). The second happened in Bronitskyi Lis near Drohobych, where German troops organized the massacre of almost half of the nearby city’s population.
— Sam Bardaouil
For her solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, the artist has created a new video and sound installation that was shot in Ukraine in the spring of 2023. Titled Bud’mo (a popular Ukrainian toast that loosely translates to “let us be”), the work is a poetic yet sobering acknowledgment of tragedies perpetrated by man and of cycles of life and death. The video and sound composition was produced in Ukraine during Spring 2023. The installation is a multi-channel projection that transports visitors to the so-called black “partisan forest” Chornyi Lis (black forest) and the Bronetskyi forest in Galicia. It refers to historical connections and partly forgotten or hidden overlaps of Ukrainian, German, and Russian history.
— Excerpt from the exhibition catalog