The “Situational Flowerbeds” Project: Participants of the “Memory Polis” Forum

In 2025, as part of the program Scattered / Sown, Dasha Chechushkova, Anna Nykytiuk, and Kseniia Shcherbakova launched the project Situational Flowerbeds, dedicated to the fallen soldier and artist Artur Snitkus. The team took part in the “Memory Polis” forum organized by VETERANKA at the KSE Dragon Capital Building on January 23.

Artur Snitkus was killed on June 7, 2024, while carrying out a combat mission in Donetsk region. He was an artist, musician, and stylist, and a member of the queer community. He was 36 years old.

The project team shares that it was the need to process the pain of losing Artur that became the ground for action.

“Of the two of us, Ania Nykytiuk was at Artur’s funeral. When the grave was filled, Artur’s mother, who was standing next to Ania, said: ‘Artur, now you are a flowerbed.’ And from that phrase we realized that, indeed, that is what it is,” Dasha Chechushkova recalls. She herself was grieving Artur’s death from abroad.

The founders note that in moments of loss and helplessness, when you do not know what to do, it helps to return to simple practices. Gardening has a therapeutic dimension. It can support trauma recovery, especially when planting is done collectively — within a community united by a shared purpose.

The project also explores how fluid, spontaneous, and decentralized memorialization practices can be.

“This project involves creating flowerbeds as a commemorative response — in honor and memory of those we have lost, those who deserve to be remembered. It is about people, but also about places and situations we have lost during the full-scale invasion and throughout the war,” Dasha Chechushkova shared in an interview with Suspilne.

Situational flowerbeds function as commemorative tools — a process that can be repeated and become a ritual. What matters is not the longevity of the flowerbed itself, but the act of planting and collective action.

“This grew out of our traditions — memorial days, funerary rituals, the way people tend the graves of their loved ones, or plant gardens in memory of someone they have lost,” the founders explain.

The team later found the most accessible planting method — seed bombs, which they create together with participants during workshops. Such workshops have already taken place in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and even Berlin.

In November 2025, the Situational Flowerbeds collective, together with VETERANKA, held a workshop as part of the public program of the Pavilion of Culture “On the Question of the Hidden,” accompanying the exhibition by Ai Weiwei. During the event, participants created a flowerbed in memory of Movement member Iryna Tsvila, who also worked with and loved flowers.

Iryna was killed on February 25, 2022, while defending Kyiv. Before taking part in the Revolution of Dignity and later serving in the military, she was a landscape designer specializing in rose gardens and greenhouses.

The team encourages people to create a flowerbed in their own way and on their own terms. What matters most is that the person feels relief. The project emphasizes that this practice is not about the final result, but about the act itself — about creating a living monument with one’s own hands, something that grows and evolves.

The team also notes that participation is possible even without gardening. They suggest the idea of “flowerbeds without plants” — spontaneous altars, landscape or garden-based compositions, installations, readymade works, and more.

The founders do not expect a predefined outcome for the initiative. They believe it is important to care for the project and encourage others to remember, but fully controlling its trajectory is neither possible nor necessary.

As a symbolic concluding point of the project, the team envisions creating a book that will gather photographs of all the flowerbeds along with their stories.