Sofa, Zimmer, Wohnung. Forced Migration and Women in Partnerships

This contribution traces the winding paths of women who have been swept into exile as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the unexpected partnerships that bloom in the spaces between survival and memory. Through fragile networks of shared rooms, borrowed sofas, and resilient whispers of “home,” these women craft a new language of belonging. The essay traces connections across generations, contrasting today’s struggles with memories of survival from the Second World War. It echoes past forced migrations, told from the perspectives of girls, mothers, and grandmothers, threaded with desolation yet brimming with endurance. In this essay, while following the routes of the many road trips she has made—and continues to make—as a forced migrant in the aftermath of Russia’s large-scale military offensive on Ukraine, Olena Khoroshylova reflects on the relationship between various forms of shelter architecture and the survival strategies employed by forced women migrants. Along her journey, she encounters other women recently displaced from Ukraine as well as art students and the indelible memory of her grandmother, a forced worker in a Nazi military factory. Khoroshylova entangles her own experience with theirs through the practice of collaborative art and interviews.