In Loving Memory examines urban development a form of erasure, drawing parallels between construction sites and gravesites. At the center of the work is a salvaged tile from a demolished residential building in Berlin, printed with an image of a borrow pit shaped like a coffin. The piece reflects the emotional impact of "reverse migration" and modern-day colonization. Gentrification, driven by rising rents and foreign investments, displaces communities and leads to a silent yet widespread cultural death. The work contemplates death as a transition—from vitality to emptiness—and the displacement experienced when homes are lost. Construction sites and gravesites, building and destruction, life and death, become eerily intertwined through the erasure of collective memory and history.

Name: Alison Klymchuk
Born — Location: Canada — Ukraine — Germany

Born in Canada to immigrant parents, I spent every summer in Kyiv reconnecting with my family and heritage, bridging the cultural distance between my two worlds. After my ancestral home in Makariv was destroyed by Russian shelling, I felt irrevocably lost by the death of my roots. I relocated to Germany to be closer to my Ukrainian family while navigating the loss of our home. This journey has deeply shaped my understanding of cultural survival.

Alison Klymchuk is a Ukrainian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin, working in sculpture, mixed-media, photography and semiotics to unearth urban methodologies. She sources her materials from skip bins and construction sites, reconstructing remnants of demolished residential buildings to translate stories of erasure. Alison has mapped cities across Germany, Ukraine and North America through a process rooted in rituals of gathering and home-building in the face of colonial power structures. Website: www.alisonklymchuk.ca Instagram: @alisonklymchuk