AT THE BACK OF THE MIND
MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION
At the Back of the Mind (Z Tyłu Głowy) is a multimedia installation that brings attention to the largely untold story of women executed and then buried in the Bykivnia forest—victims of Soviet mass violence who have been left out of the historical record. Mytych draws on family memory and archival research to honour 54 women named on the Katyn list: teachers, conspirators, landowners—some as young as 18—sentenced to death for their social and political engagement.
The installation features 54 oil portraits, each depicting only the back of a woman’s head. Refusing conventional representation, these images suggest both individuality and universality—figures whose identities were erased, yet who might be anyone. Standing before them, the viewer takes the position of witness, but also—uncomfortably—of perpetrator.
A video filmed in the forest, where such crimes were committed in secret, deepens this sense of uneasy proximity. Shot from a first-person perspective, the camera moves slowly through the trees, evoking the isolation of the crime scene. At the film’s end, the sound of boots approaches from behind, followed by three pistol shots. What begins as an act of remembrance becomes a confrontation with history, with complicity, and with the silences that shape collective memory.
This work was featured in Mytych’s 2025 monographic exhibition of the same name at MOCAK – the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków.
AT THE BACK OF THE MIND 2025, SINGLE-CHANNEL VIDEO
INSTALLATION
