First meeting of the public Boji remembers from his performances at the Church of the Transformation in Kyiv. Boji during 2015-2018 visited baptist music band rehearsals where started to play the shaker. Lately Boji’s unique voice was remarqued. So in 2015-2018 Boji started singing and finished out by becoming the main vocalist of the church choir. At the same time, she was working on her first album “Impulse” and released it at the age of 18 while she was still studying at school.
In 2017, she began experimenting with the actualization of ukrainian traditional folklore music. Boji remarques two inspiring sources that increase her interest in digging into Ukrainian sound foundations : music archives of Oleksiy Nagornyuk and the newest archive by Polyphonyproject.
In her musical practice she started on transforming the reading of folk chants and humming by superimposing the sound of the brutal urban landscape with a tender ukrainian archaic sound. Boji has experienced to live several years on a construction site of a future Kyiv “New Concrete Jungle” in the Pozniaky district. Later she transmissed her feelings into a multimedia work “The mountain stands high”. In this composition, the authentic song of Sumy region Polissia, lyrically dramatic with grief for the fate of Ukraine, is intertwined with Soviet propaganda that discolors vibrant Ukrainian identity.
In 2017, she started experimenting with pop music during her residency in Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. Boji used a format of song cover JAMALA – “Chomu kvity mayutʹ ochi?” (“Why do flowers have eyes?”) to show the fragility of contemporary Ukrainian reality. Sound field recording has multilayered sonority of distant rockets, shootings and an almost church prayer singing coming from the building’s holes. The site-specific vocal performance took place on the ruins of the formal regional psychiatric hospital in the village of Semenivka (Sloviansk), Donetsk region (destroyed during the Russian war in 2014) and on the territory of the remains of the Khimprom production association. Project supported by the NGO ” Misto Sad”.
Boji remarques about these personal deep emotions during the sound recording on the minute of silence in the framework of an opening of memorial plaque in the Sloviansk administration. This feeling she expressed through the ukrainian folk song “Oi u poli drevo” & mix with the accompaniment from field recording .
The next step for Boji in her practice was the studies of contemporary art always melted with sound experimentations. Boji presented her works at exhibitions in Expocenter of Ukraine 2017 (Kyiv,UA), GOGOLFEST 2017 (Kyiv,UA), Cultural space Akt Platform art factory 2017 (Kyiv,UA), PinchukArtCentre 2018 (Kyiv,UA) .
In paralel Boji released her next album “No position” 2018. In her second album she reflects on the topics of formation, understanding of oneself, and the period of coming out of the church in general. This album shows virtuoso experiments with the styles of ambient new wave and folk electronics. “No position” was the first album that artist presented to the public in a white walls cube at Mala Gallery of the Mystetskyi Arsenalу together with screning of the first video clip for the song “Let’s remove the weeds out of the obvious field” 2018 (Kyiv,UA).
Boji from that period started to infinitely explore contemporary arts in different mediums : video-art, installation, performance and playfully use them for his own Boji project in general.
Her first coming in the Kyiv night culture scene happened the same year with her full concert program in cult Kyiv club Otel’.
Boji made a really important work for her forthcoming practice called “gnashing of teeth”. That was a series of special noise and body sounds recordings produced for the show in Chernivtsi at Steinbarg Gallery in 2019 . Lately the same year she went to study in Denmark the Performative Arts in the school at Højskolen Snoghøj . That period Boji discovered her water power through a series of underwater sound recordings. Also the artist started to build her own system in practice by taking a more systematic approach to creating experimental music. The same year Boji released her third album “МИКРОСПОРИЯ / MICROSPORIA” that is an infection similar to shingles used by musician to explore in her audio and vocal practice. “Then I started to become interested in corporeality and irony through music…” – mentioned Boji.
Another interesting peculiarity of this period is that the artist began to explore pop music that would be grasped by the public from the first textual sound and use it to infect dance floors with melody and hypnotize the audience magnetically.
In 2019, Boji performed a solo concert at the Closer club. It was a day of premieres of the Hits with the album “МИКРОСПОРИЯ / MICROSPORIA”. Interesting fact describing this evening was that the composition “The Ideal Woman” Boji sang and improvised 10 times, making the stage go fully orgasmic. Afterwards Boji made a truly erotic chamanic dance performance with Anatoly Belov (Anatoly Belov (b. 1977, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian graphic designer, performer, director, musician, and frontman of the queer band Lyudska Podoba..).
In 2019, Boji used techniques from viral pop music in his video art that went insanely viral with 40 million views.
Boji produces singles such as СМЕРТЬ НА ХАРЬКОВСКОМ ШОССЕ / DEATH ON KHARKIVSKA HIGHWAY (feat. VENERA), ГОРОДСКАЯ СУМАСШЕДШАЯ / CRAZY CITY GIRL 2020 (Kyiv, UA) .
For the Kyiv scene this year was also remarkable because Boji premiered in drag. Artist debuted in Ukrainian contemporary drag with a concert with his fourth album “Calambur”.
The project was fully supported by Coming Out of Isolation 2.0 , a long-term project of the IZOLYATSIA Foundation and the NGO “KyivPride”, which with the help of modern art contributes to the visibility of LGBT+ people, their full and equal inclusion in public life in 2020 (IZOLYATSIA, Kyiv UA).
After participating in the project Coming Out of Isolation 2.0 the artist made his personal coming out. Boji in parallel had offensive messages and was excluded from his ex-baptiste-church. The fact that Boji was for them out of their conservative norms but there is always a hope that it will change after Ukrainian Queer Victory of Freedom.
One of the important facts of this year is that after all those life transformations Boji decided she will take a new stage name for the drag performance direction of her work as “Cold Bohdana / Холодна Богдана” .
The same year the series of drag events started with Glory Ball in Kyiv. It was the heyday of the Ukrainian queer scene and the “Cold Bohdana”.
2021“Cold Bohdana” had her first drag show at the festival ICKPA on stage of “Extraordinary-queer-cabaret-magic-infant” with a musical performance “Роза в целофане / Rose In Cellophane”.
With the beginning of the full-scale invasion on 24 of February 2022 Boji made a total transformation on herself and presented “Lament” (Berlin, DE).
Boji’s performance “Lament” (Golosiniya in Ukraine) was inspired by the Ukrainian traditional form of vocal lament for the dead. The work is an attempt to reflect on the horror and pain that Ukraine is going through, it is a lament for the brutally murdered Ukrainians by russian soldiers. The original lament song used in the performance is addressed to the mother.
Lately in 2022 the artist performed at Cashemir Radio (Berlin, DE) .
From 2022- 2023 Boji works on her fifth album “СУБВЕРСИВНІ ВИСЄРИ / SUBVERSIVE SHIT TALK” (Berlin, DE) .
Boji co-create an experimental collective “Kvirtet” dedicated to represent and glorify Ukrainian queer culture and emerge temporal site specific gathering places for the the queerest of the queeres Worldwide.
Kvirtet debut show happend in the framework of Dragana Bar party by Kem Warsaw in Sophiensaele, TANZTAGE 2023 (Berlin, DE). Second collective performance “Filling the seams between the white tiles” was presented in Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Historischer Übergang (Berlin, DE).
СУБВЕРСИВНІ ВИСЄРИ / SUBVERSIVE SHIT-TALKS
Boji presents his six album “SUBVERSIVE SHIT-TALKS” at MeetFactory Prague in frame of Nomadic Dzherelo (The Source) on 02.03.2023 .
This is an unique album-piece that the artist made 100% in Ukrainian language being in exile in Berlin due to the Russian War in Ukraine. The 6 songs from the 6 album encourage Ukrainians to show to all the world their power of standing up from the dirty bottom of the future into the NeoEra without any dictatorships possible on the planet Earth.
All of Humanity needs to listen A.S.A.P. to the last track “Nuclear Dickheads” to finally understand that it really is a common problem…
