Starość kobiecego ciała jako metafora społeczno-polityczna w zapisie video Słoik zupy Serhija Bratkowa

The subject of this article is the image of an old female body in the video called Jar of soup (2004), created by a contemporary Ukrainian artist Serhiy Bratkov. It is a short video showing an old, lonely woman eating a beetroot soup from the jar. In this work, old age was presented primarily in the bodily dimension. Using the image of an old body, which is marginalized in official visuality, the artist raises a number of issues important both for Ukrainian society and for the overall reflection on the problem of old age and women aging. I see the work of Bratkov primarily in the Ukrainian context: as a bitter reflection on the attitude to old age in the post-Soviet society and as a comment to the symbols of femininity established in the Ukrainian culture, closely related to national ideas.