Fragile Podil was originally filmed in Kyiv, in 2018, during a residency program in which Pavel Brăila (b. 1971, lives and works in Chișinău, Moldova) participated alongside artists from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Belarus.

Up in the air, the artist puts color into motion with a pink ribbon that floats in the wind and draws transitory lines over Podil, the historic part of Kyiv. « Podil is a complex interweaving of streets, electric cables in the crowns of old trees, tram lines, and tired façades of buildings with a complex history. Maybe it’s missing some lightness and the special feeling you get when flying in a dream?”, wrote Brăila at that time. By having a ribbon fly over iconic places in Podil, he draws an invisible calligraphic line that doesn’t leave any marks behind, ”only a memory of the sky above the city”.

In the wake of the devastation in Podil after the war began, the artist revisited the video work. Fragile Podil/reconsidered (2022) includes the following statement: ”This flight over a quiet but vibrant pre-war Kyiv was made in September 2018, when people did not live yet under the specter of death and children were still running free and happy in the streets. When the artist was able to make ephemeral drawings in the wind with the optimism and the confidence that a war rhetoric cannot grasp.”

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The 2018 residency was organized by CSM / Foundation Center for Contemporary Art, in the context of the project 4 Days on the Road.