Olivia Hernaïz

SILENCIO

2024

Silencio is the title of a song by Carlos Gardel (1890-1935). Silencio evokes the suffering of a mother whose five sons were taken from her at the end of the First World War. Silencio was a song that Purificación Hernaïz, Olivia’s grandmother, listened to repeatedly.

Purificación was a child of exile. She was adopted by a Belgian family. Two of her brothers were adopted in the USSR. Another brother remained in Spain. This break-up of the family followed the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which put an end to the Republic following General Franco’s coup d’état.

Through the memory of her grandmother, Olivia Hernaïz evokes the exiles resulting from this heartbreaking episode. The exhibition also highlights the memory of solidarity and welcoming, as well as the learning and forgetting processes specific to immigration.

In conceiving and staging this exhibition, the artist has endeavoured to bring the four branches of the family (Spanish, Belgian, Ukrainian and Russian) together. Testimonies, readings, the conception of a text or the creation of a drawing - whatever it is, we will come across cousins, aunts here, nieces there.

This tribute is a song of solidarity and cultural and linguistic exchange. Childhood, the passing on of knowledge and language play a central role.

Laurent Courtens, curator at ISELP, Brussels

Purificación Hernaïz Van den Eynden

Installation, embroidery on textile, 220x1200cm, 2024

Assistant couturier : Mathieu Jauze

Purificación Hernaïz was a child of exile following the Spanish Civil War. When she was thirteen, she was taken in by a Belgian couple: Mr and Mrs Van den Eynden. She was not officially adopted until she was forty. Her Spanish parents were still alive... Among Purificación’s grandchildren is Olivia, who built this monument for her, in the form of an oversized bed and patchwork blanket.

The background colours of the chequerboard composition conjure up two Spanish flags, that of the defeated republic (pale purple, yellow, red) and that of the reigning monarchy (yellow and red), in addition to black and white for the heraldry. The embroidered motifs on the chequerboard evoke the objects that belonged to the deceased: mirror, jewellery, medicine box, pencil case, fan... Other squares are filled with phrases evoking memories of Purificación, collected from her twelve grandchildren in Belgium. A fragmentary portrait emerges of a figure plagued by memory, oblivion and silence. A figure of secrecy as well as conveyance. From a secret handed down…

Silencio en la noche de los tiempos

Song, radio. 3’54”, 2024

Interpreters : Cuco and Luisa Pérez

Lyrics : Mila Escorza Garcia

Adaptation and reinterpretation of Silencio by Carlos Gardel (1932)

The sound emitted by the radio is that of a reinterpretation of Carlos Gardel’s tango, Silencio, expressing the pain of a mother who lost her children in the First World War, a song Purificación listened to and sang repeatedly. The text inserts the refrain of a lullaby into Gardel’s tango, as well as evoking the flight of the children of Spanish Republicans from 1937.

The lyricist for this adaptation of Silencio is one of Olivia Hernaïz’s aunts, living in Spain and a descendent of the Spanish branch of the family. The musicians are Luisa and Cuco Pérez whom the artist met through their album “Allez, Allez” in which they perform songs that were sung by Spanish refugees in French camps after the ‘Retirada*’ (tangos, habaneras, cuplés, ...).

слезами птицы не умеют плакать

(BIRDS CRY WITHOUT TEARS)

Video, 13’52’’, 2024

Voice : Kristina Ernais-Eskorsa, Olivia Hernaïz and Anton Orlov

Soundscape : Maru Mushtrieva

Birds Cry Without Tears offers a collegiate reading, in Russian, of an illustrated children’s book first published in the USSR in 1924. The story is by Vitali Valentinovitch Bianchi (1894-1959), an ornithologist and author of children’s literature. The book tells the story of a little swallow who has lost her nest and her family. She wanders from shelter to shelter, seeking a welcome from other birds, a family of squirrels, wasps... She cannot find a new home, and eventually finds her mother, as her refuge. Clearly, this story represents a metaphorical expression of the condition of exile, wandering and the quest to return, in the style of a child’s tale.

The reading is in three voices: that of the artist, who plays the role of the little swallow, and those of Anton and Kristina, two of her cousins, who alternate the roles of narrator and other characters. Anton and Kristina are the respective grandchildren of Pablo and Arturo, the two younger brothers of Olivia’s grandmother Purificación. Pablo and Arturo were both adopted by the USSR in 1937. Initially housed in a children’s home in Kherson (southern Ukraine), they then made their own lives, one in Stakhanov in the Donbas (Russian-speaking part of Ukraine), the other in Moscow. Anton lives in Moscow, Kristina in Montreal. She grew up in the Donbas.

The video shows the artist’s hand following the text as it is read, leafing through the pages of the book. In the background, a sky being crossed by flocks of birds. In the background, we see a sky being crossed by flocks of birds; Olivia Hernaïz filmed it in the Pyrenees, on the French-Spanish border, where thousands of Spanish refugees passed through during the ‘Retirada’, the mass exodus of 450,000 Republicans after the Fascist victory in 1939.

LA ETERNA JUVENTUD

2021

In the body of work ‘La Eterna Juventud’ (The Eternal Youth), Olivia Hernaïz explores the ways in which cultural heritage, national identity and memory influence the individual. Her interest in these themes was awakened while studying her family history, which led her to Russia. 

She spent three consecutive summers there with a family – her family - she had never previously met. Her grandmother’s two younger brothers, Arturo and Pablo, had been shipped to the then Soviet Union in 1937, together with 3,500 other ‘niños de Rusia’ (children of Russia). In total, more than 30,000 children left Spain for various European countries for protection against the Franco regime and the civil war. Olivia Hernaïz’ grandmother thus arrived in Belgium at the age of thirteen, refugee separated from the rest of her family.

Ilse Roosens, curator at Mu.ZEE, Ostend

____

Dans le projet ‘La Eterna Juventud’ (La Jeunesse Éternelle), Olivia Hernaïz s’intéresse à l’influence qu’exercent sur l’individu le patrimoine culturel, l’identité nationale et la mémoire. L’intérêt de l’artiste pour ces thèmes a été éveillé en étudiant son histoire familiale, ce qui l’a amenée jusqu’en Russie, où elle a passé trois étés successifs dans une famille — sa famille — qu’elle n’avait jamais rencontrée auparavant. 

En 1937, 3500 enfants espagnols ont été envoyés par bateau en Union Soviétique. Parmi ces ‘niños de Rusia’ (enfants de Russie) se trouvaient les deux frères cadets de sa grand-mère, Arturo et Pablo. Plus de 30 000 enfants ont ainsi été envoyés aux quatre coins de l’Europe, dans le but de les protéger de la guerre civile et du régime de Franco. La grand-mère d’Olivia Hernaïz fut séparée de sa famille, réfugiée en Belgique à l’âge de 13 ans.

Ilse Roosens, curatrice à Mu.ZEE, Ostende

¡нo пacapaн!

This work takes the form of a music performance as well as a sound installation.

Composed in 1940 by Antonio Paños, ‘Hijos de España’ was a military march sang as a chorus by the ‘niños de Rusia’ during political celebrations in the USSR. In collaboration with Yamen Martini and the musicians of kleinVerhaal and YaGoon, the artist offers a new interpretation of the score, which has remained dead letter ever since. The song played at the opening of the exhibition in the form of a joyful urban parade also warns u against the current resurgence of nationalism.

THE SONG

You can listen to the song  ¡Но пасаран! here :

¡Но пасаран!, performance and sound installation in collaboration with Yamen Martini and the musicians of kleinVerhaal and YaGoon, fabric and deck chairs, 13’ 19”, 2021

Exhibition view, La Eterna Juventud, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, 2021 (copyright @ Steven Decroos and Katie Danneels)

LA ETERNA JUVENTUD

In this video, which the exhibition is named after, Olivia Hernaïz takes us on a family journey. During her stays in Moscow, she was welcomed with open arms by her cousins. Learning Russian to recreate this lifelong family link, she found herself at the heart of a story to be written, that of her great uncle, whether his name was Arturo or Luis, it doesn’t really matter in the end.

TRUCO O TRATO

With this textile piece, the artist reinterpreted a cover of the propaganda booklet ‘Temas Espanoles’ published under Franco’s regime in the fifties. The presence of Spanish children in Russia was instrumentalized both by the Spanish and Russian authorities. Franco portrayed the children as prisoners to be saved, while Stalin portrayed them as the embodiment of the communist dream.

Алфавит

Following the letters of the Russian alphabet, one discovers the daily life of the ‘niños de Rusia’ in the various homes located in USSR. At first, the Spanish teachers who accompanied them from Spain emphasized Spanish culture within their education. After all, the intention was to eventually repatriate them to their homeland. However, the outbreak of the Second World War derailed this plan, and they remained in Russia, gradually building a hybrid identity between their native land and their host country.

¿Quién Gana?

Every Friday at the Spanish Centre in Moscow, lively card games are played between former ‘niños de Rusia’: Nicolas, Luis, Herminio and Enrique. When they arrived in the USSR in 1937, they did not have Spanish card games. At the time, they decided to recreate them, taking inspiration from newspapers at hand. The artist imagined how these cards would have looked like.

Exhibition view at Mu.ZEE in Ostend (copyright @ Steven Decroos)