The second book festival “Fundament: Stories about Culture” has started at the Ukrainian House. This year, it is dedicated to travel stories (both literal and metaphorical), in particular, those of Sofia Yablonska , the first Ukrainian woman to travel around the world and record her journey in photographs and books “The Charm of Morocco” (1932), “From the Land of Rye and Opium” (1935), and the two-volume work “Distant Horizons” (1939). We have collected 10 of the most interesting artifacts from the artist's personal archive, which can be seen at the exhibition.
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Photos from a trip around the world
Sofia Jablonska, whose youth fell during World War II, wrote that she wanted to live her life in a way that no one could deprive her of her home. The life of a nomad, which she consciously chose to find herself and her calling, made this possible.
She was born in 1907 in the Lviv region into the family of a priest. Since childhood, she dreamed of traveling the world and the vanilla flower. “I will never see it, that distant country that exists like us, only on the other side of the globe. Or maybe someday I will fall into a very deep abyss, maybe I will break through the ground and still reach the country where there is vanilla…”, – little Sofia told her mother.
At the age of 20, she will make her first trip to Paris with the money she earned by organizing film screenings. Then there will be Morocco, China, North Africa, Southeast Asia, North and South America, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia. She will go where tourists do not go: she will share life with the aborigines on Bora Bora or with the Berbers in the Sahara. She will appear everywhere with a movie camera to record the process of changing her own attitude towards phenomena, events and entire cultures, and ultimately to find out what this world is like.
Photos from the family archive
The exhibition features photographs of Sofia Jablonska with her sons — Alan, Jacques, and Michel; her second husband, French diplomat Jean-Marie Houdin, and their sons; Sofia Jablonska's first husband, Leon Lipshitz, with their son Alan; Jablonska's sons against the backdrop of the Kambodia liner.
Silk qipao
A black qipao with hand-painted silk from Jablonska's wardrobe, brought from China, where the artist and her husband lived for over 10 years and gave birth to sons Jacques and Michel.
The qipao is a silk dress that became popular among educated women in China in the 1930s. It resembles Japanese kimonos or Qing Dynasty mandarin robes—with long sleeves, trimmed collars, delicate embroidery, and a shiny silk texture.
Travel beauty kit
The women's set in the Art Deco style consists of a compact powder compact with a mirror and tubes for lipstick and perfume Aphrodisia Fabergé Inc., Paris – New York. The surface of the silver powder compact is decorated with turquoise enamel embossing.
Opium smoking kit
Sofia Yablonska brought an opium smoking set from the late 19th and early 20th centuries from China. It includes a brass opium lamp in the shape of a Chinese lantern, a lacquered silver pipe with figured embossing, and a burner.
Correspondence with Mykhailo Rudnytsky
Mykhailo Rudnytsky was Sofia Yablonska's literary agent and editor. He caught the special charm of her texts and helped find the best marketing and publishing plan for the writer. It was Mykhailo Rudnytsky who introduced Yablonska to the feminist environment centered around the Ukrainian magazines “Zhynosha Dolya” and “Nova Hata”, where excerpts from the traveler's texts were published.
Stepan Levynsky's typewriter
The Smith Corona Sterling Black typewriter with Cyrillic font belonged to Stepan Levynsky, a traveler, orientalist, writer, and diplomat. He bequeathed it to Sofia Yablonskaya, his closest friend. The artists met in Paris, where the man was studying oriental languages. It was Levynsky who inspired Sofia to travel beyond the European continent.
Travel maps
Jablonska's archive contains many paper and textile maps. The exhibition features maps from the early 20th century that helped her plan her travel routes through Vietnam and Yunnan, a province in southern China.
Photos from a trip to Asia
The photographs were taken in the Chinese province of Yunnan and the Tokin district in northern Vietnam. The exhibition also features a selection of photographs taken by the artist in the 1930s. Nathalie Udin, Yablonska's granddaughter, selected a series of frames and printed them in analog mode in a photo studio in the Paris suburb of Montreux, where Sophia studied cinematography, visiting the Albatross film studio.
Correspondence with Volodymyr Vynnychenko
One of Sofia Yablonska's first readers in France was Volodymyr Vynnychenko. She corresponded with the writer and his wife Rosalia for a long time. In one of his diary entries, Vynnychenko writes that Yablonska is one of his few friends in Paris.
The festival, with special programs, public performances, and a book fair, will last until October 26. The exhibition program will continue as a separate project from October 31 to November 16 at the Ukrainian House.
Photo : Ruslan Syngaevsky