Statement

My practice is primarily textile- and map-based. I explore landscape and territory as spaces shaped by memory, loss, violence and belonging, with the focus on how places are transformed, erased or, in a contrary, how they resist and defend themselves.

Maps are central to my current work. By reducing landscapes to constellations of abstract lines, maps cannot reflect the tragedies these places are going through, nor their resilience and struggle for survival. At the same time, maps can serve as precise documents of landscapes, preserving a record of how these places were once represented. Even when the actual place is long gone or radically transformed, a map can still keep its memory alive.

Map is also an instrument of power over territory, landscape, nature. Through the technique and process of hand-embroidery, I transform lines, borders and contours into material traces, taking them from the realm of apparent objectivity and control to the one of tactility and bodiliness, physical and emotional intimacy.

My interest in maps is closely connected to my experience of war, displacement and the loss of access to the landscapes of Kharkiv, my hometown in the very east of Ukraine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, landscape for me has become inseparable from the topics of memory, grief, belonging and absence. I am interested in the tension between a map's claim to represent a territory objectively and the deeply personal meanings that a place can hold.