Ornate wells, brightly colored houses, old photographs, wooden churches, and small chapels, all set against a backdrop of stunning scenery. Bukovyna is a lesser-known but all the more magical region of Eastern Europe. We interviewed the creators of the Babyn Buchok project, a showcase of the hidden treasures of Bukovyna, Ukraine.
What should we know about you, the creators of the Babyn Buchok project?
The Babyn Buchok consists of two people, Ivan Mudrak and Irutsa Slepenyuk. We both study at the Vyzhnytsia College of Applied Arts and Design named after Vasyl Shkriblyak and we are connected by a desire to travel and explore village life and rural architecture. In our spare time, we like to travel across the Bukovyna region in the Chernivtsi Oblast, and we are also members of the art community 20Partisan_n.
What is the aim of your project?
Our aim is to find and protect hidden treasures in the villages of the Bukovyna region, as, like many other regions of Ukraine, it has a rich cultural heritage. The main goal of our project is to promote and preserve this.
How do you find these wells, facades, etc.; do you systematically travel to places?
We look at the location on Google Maps and create an approximate route to the targeted villages. Once we arrive, we wander around trying to find treasures that randomly appear in front of us. These findings play a significant role in the identity and appearance of Ukrainian Bukovyna. Trips are usually scheduled every two weeks and we sometimes take our friends on expeditions to introduce them to our field of work and share our enthusiasm for Bukovyna.
What is special about the Bukovyna region?
Bukovyna is an underrated region in Ukraine. Visitors here witness a completely different life and cultural heritage of Ukraine, which is still perfectly preserved today; Ukrainian Bukovyna is remarkable for having preserved the oldest examples of wooden sacred architecture, the house churches. The region is made up of fragile cultural material, mostly of wooden objects, which require special care and close study. We have observed that the Chernivtsi region is one of the leaders in the careless treatment of cultural heritage, especially its villages; they often modify the architecture of local significance, thus the character of the region is slowly disappearing.
The project description includes a fragment of a poem by one of the most famous Ukrainian poets, Ivan Franko. Why did you choose it?
This fragment caught my eye in the disturbing early days of the full-scale invasion when Russia continued to destroy my beloved country with increasing bloodlust, so I feel and have always felt the need to be in unity with the burning part of Ukraine.
The idea of the poem Cranes is not new; Ivan Franko describes cranes driven from their homeland by the scourge of poverty and ruin. He tells the life of the Ukrainian people, their suffering, and their hard work through descriptions of landscapes, food, and human actions, and asks the cranes to spread the essence of Ukrainian existence in foreign countries, to proclaim it, and to ask for help. Traveling through the villages, I saw many ruined houses, churches in poor condition, etc., so the specific lines in the project description resonated with me because of their relevance as well as my own experience.
Babyn Buchok | Instagram
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